The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Catholic World, Vol. 05, April 1867 to September 1867
    
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Catholic World, Vol. 05, April 1867 to September 1867

Author: Various

Release date: January 10, 2017 [eBook #53935]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Don Kostuch


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CATHOLIC WORLD, VOL. 05, APRIL 1867 TO SEPTEMBER 1867 ***




Produced by Don Kostuch




[Transcriber's notes: This text is based on text and image files
from the Internet Archive and
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/browse.journals/cath.1867.html.
Page numbers are shown in curly braces, such as {123}. They have been
moved to the nearest sentence break.]

{i}

  The Catholic World.

  _Monthly Magazine_

  of

  General Literature and Science

  ------

  Vol. V., NO. 25
  April to September 1867.

  ------

  New York:

  The Catholic Publication House,
  126 Nassau Street.
  ----
  1867

{ii}

  John A. Gray & Green

  Printers,

  16 & 18 Jacob Street, New-York/

{iii}

    Contents.

  Athlone and Aughrim, 119.
  Ancor-Viatt, a New Giant City, 135.
  An Old Quarrel, 145.
  A Naturalist's Home, 189.
  Animals, The Souls of, 510.
  Americus Vespucius and Christopher Columbus, 6ll.
  An Irish Saint, 664.

  Birds, Architecture of, 349.
  Bible, Protestant Attacks upon the, 789.
  Bride of Eberstein, The, 848.

  Church and State, 1
  Conversions to the Catholic Church, Dr. Bacon on, 104
  Conscience, The Revenge of, 236.
  Catholic Doctrine and Natural Science, 280.
  Cousin, Victor, 338.
  Church and the Roman Empire, The, 362.
  Christianity and Social Happiness, 414.
  Congresses, Catholic, 433.
  Crucifix of Baden, The, 480, 672.
  Catholic Church and Modern Art, The, 546.
  Christianity and its Conflicts, 701.

  Decimated, 794.

  Early Rising, 754.
  Eberstein, The Bride of, 848.

  Father Ignatius of St. Paul, 174.
  Father of Waters, The, 354.
  Flavia Domitilla, The Two Lovers of, 386, 529, 651, 815.
  Fathers of the Desert, Sayings of, 814.

  Godfrey Family, The, 34.

  Holy Sepulchre, Procession in the Church of, 232.
  He went about Doing Good, 258.

  Ireland, Invasions of, by the Danes, 768.
  Ireland, The Churches of, 828.

  Lady of La Garaye, 227.
  Lectures and Conferences among the Ancients, 289.
  Libraries of the Middle Ages, 397.
  Lorraine, Lakes of, 522

  Miscellany, 140, 284, 428, 570, 714, 856.
  Mediaeval Universities, 207.
  Mercersburg Philosophy, 253.
  Mortality of Great Capitals, 422.
  Minor Brethren, The, 495.
  Marriage, Indissolubility of, 567, 634.
  Moore, Sir Thomas, 633.
  Missionary Journey in South America, Scenes from, 807.
  Miner, The, 852.

  Paris, A Talk about, 97.
  Père Hyacinthe, Sketch of, 382.
  Papacy Schismatic, Guettée's, 463, 577.
  Plants, The Struggle for Existence among, 538.
  Procter, Adelaide Ann, 553.
  Parisian Problems, Solution of some, 691.
  Playing with Fire, 697.
  Paris, Old, 824

  Ritualism, 52.
  Robert; or, The Influence of a Good Mother, 66, 194.
  Rationalism, Lecky's History of, 77.
  Rome or Reason, 721.

  Sister, The Story of, 15.
  Spain, Modern Writers of, 26.
  Spain, Impressions of, 160, 320, 443, 594, 738.
  Speech, Visible, 417.

  The Birds' Friend, 268.
  Time-Measurers, 271.
  Three Leaves from an Old Journal, 627.
  Thermometers, 707.
  Tuscan Peasants and the Maremna, 710.
  Tetzel, John, 838.

  Verheyden's Right Hand, 309.

  Wandering Jew, The, 761.

  ----

    Poetry.

  A Dream, 94.
  Asperges Me, 134.
  At Threescore, 235.
  A Family Motto, 257.
  Abide in Me, 767.

  Blessed Sacrament, Praises of the, 347.
  Beams, 753.

  Confiteor, 206.
  Columbus, 525.
  Charles the X. at the Convent of Yuste, 671.

  Forebodings, 494.

  Gladiators' Song, The, 521.

  Hidden Crucifixion, The, 159.

  Il Duomo, 608.

  Kettle Song, 51.

  Looking Down the Road, 172.
  Laudate Pueri Dominum, 413.
  Leaf of Last Year, This, 545.

  May, A Fancy, 318.
  Mary's Dirge, 631.
  Mea Culpa, 690.

  Napoleon, The Death of; 379.

  Olive Branches in Gethsemane, 14

  Planting of the Cross, 139.

{iv}

  Regret, 442.
  Rhoda, 784.

  Sleep, My Tears in, 193.
  Sir Ralph de Blanc-Minster, 460.

  The Church and the Sinner, 25.
  The Cross, 65.

  Under the Violets, 663.

  Wasted Vigil, The, 823.

------

    New Publications.

  Art of Illuminating, Practical Hints on, 144
  American Boys and Girls, 430.
  Antoine de Boneval,574.
  Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 719.

  Bible, Literary Characters of, 576.
  Barbarossa, 719.
  Beauties of Faith, 720.

  Catholic Tracts, 142, 715.
  Christian Love, Three Phases of, 144.
  Cunningham's Catholic Library, 144.
  Christian Unity, Lectures on, 287.
  Catholic Anecdotes, 576.
  Christianity and its Conflicts, 576.
  Critical and Social Essays, 718.
  Cummiskey's Juvenile Library, 720.
  Coaina, 720.

  De Guerin, Maurice, Journal of, 288.
  Döllinger's First Age of Christianity, 716.

  Études Philologiques sur Quelques Langues Sauvages de l'Amerique, 575.
  Frithiof's Saga, 431.
  Fronde's History of England, 573.
  First Historical Transformations of Christendom, 717.
  Fathers and Sons, 718.
  Faber's Notes, 719.

  L'Echo de la France, 143.
  Labor, Sermon on the Dignity and Value of, 431.

  Mühlbach's Historical Romances, 285.
  Moore's Irish Melodies, 432.
  Monks of the West, The, 715.
  Manual of the Lives of the Popes, 720.
  Melpomene Divina, 859.

  Poems, Miss Starr's, 716.

  Roman Pontiffs, Lives and Times of, 576.

  St. Dominic, Life of, 288.
  Student of Blenheim Forest, The, 574.
  Studies in English, 574.
  Stories of the Commandments, 720.
  Science of Happiness, 860.
  Studies in the Gospels, 860.

  Tracts, Catholic, 142, 715.
  Three Phases of Christian Love, 144.
  The Man with the Broken Ear, 720.

------

{1}

  The Catholic World.

  Vol. V., NO. 25--April 1867.


      Church And State. [Footnote 1]

    [Footnote 1: Essay on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism,
    considered in their fundamental Principles. By Donoso Cortes, Marquis
    of Valdegamas. From the original Spanish. To which is prefixed a sketch
    of the Life and Works of the Author, from the Italian of G. E. de
    Castro. Translated by Madeleine Vinton Goddard. Philadelphia:
    Lippincott and Co. 1862. 16mo. PP. 835.]


The political changes and weighty events that have occurred since, have
almost obliterated from the memory the men and the revolutions or
catastrophes of 1848 and 1849. We seem removed from them by centuries, and
have lost all recollection of the great questions which then agitated the
public mind, and on which seemed suspended the issues of the life and death
of society. Then an irreligious liberalism threatened the destruction of
all authority, of all belief in revelation, and piety toward God; and a
rampant, and apparently victorious, socialism, or more properly,
anti-socialism, threatened the destruction of society itself, and to
replunge the civilized world into the barbarism from which the church, by
long centuries of patient and unremitting toil, had been slowly recovering
it.

Among the noble and brave men who then placed themselves on the side of
religion and society, of faith and Christian civilization, and attempted to
stay the advancing tide Of infidelity and barbarism, few were more
conspicuous, or did more to stir up men's minds and hearts to a sense of
the danger, than the learned, earnest, and most eloquent Donoso Cortes,
Marquis of Valdegamas. He was then in the prime and vigor of his manhood.
Born and bred in Catholic Spain at a time when the philosophy of the
eighteenth century had not yet ceased to be in vogue, and faith, if not
extinct, was obscured and weak, he had grown up without religious fervor, a
philosophist rather than a believer--a liberal in politics, and disposed to
be a social reformer. He sustained The Christinos against the Carlists, and
rose to high favor with the court of Isabella Segunda. He was created a
marquis, was appointed a senator, held various civil and diplomatic
appointments, and was in 1848 one of the most prominent and, influential
statesmen in Spain, I might almost say, in Europe.

The death of a dearly beloved brother, some time before, had very deeply
affected him, and became the occasion of awakening his dormant religious
faith, and turning his attention to theological studies. His religious
convictions became active and fruitful, and by the aid of divine grace
vivified all his thoughts and actions, growing stronger and stronger, and
more absorbing every day.
{2}
He at length lived but for religion, and devoted his whole mind and soul to
defend it against its enemies, to diffuse it in society, and to adorn it by
his piety and deeds of charity, especially to the poor. He died in the
habit of a Jesuit at Paris, in May, 1853.

Some of our readers must still remember the remarkable speech which the
Marquis de Valdegamas pronounced in the Spanish Cortes, January 4, 1849--a
speech that produced a marked effect in France, and indeed throughout all
Europe, not to add America--in which he renounced all liberal ideas and
tendencies, denounced constitutionalism and parliamentary governments, and
demanded the dictatorship. It had great effect in preparing even the
friends of liberty, frightened by the excesses of the so-called liberals,
red republicans, socialists, and revolutionists, if not to favor, at least
to accept the _coup d'état_, and the re-establishment of the Imperial
_régime_ in France; and it, no doubt, helped to push the reaction that
was about to commence against the revolutionary movements of 1848, to a
dangerous extreme, and to favor, by another sort of reaction, that
recrudescence of infidelity that has since followed throughout nearly all
Europe. It is hardly less difficult to restrain reactionary movements
within just limits than it is the movements that provoke them.

The new American Cyclopedia says Donoso Cortes published his Essay on
Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism in French. That is a mistake. He
wrote and published it in Spanish, at Madrid, in 1851. The French work
published at Paris, the same year, was a translation, and very inferior to
the original. A presentation copy by the distinguished author of the
original Spanish edition of 1851 to the late Mr. Calderon de la Barca--so
long resident Spanish minister at Washington, and who was his life-long
personal and political friend--is now in my possession, and is the very
copy from which Mrs. Goddard, now the noble wife of Rear Admiral Dahlgren,
made the translation cited at the head of this article. Mr. Calderon--a
good judge--pronounced the work in Spanish by far the most eloquent work
that he ever read in any language; and I can say, though that may not be
much, that it far surpasses in the highest and truest order of eloquence
any work in any language that I am acquainted with. In it one meets all the
power and majesty, grace and unction of the old Castilian tongue, that
noblest of modern languages, and in which Cicero might have surprised
himself.

The work necessarily loses much in being translated, but Mrs. Goddard's
translation comes as near to the original as any translation can. It is
singularly faithful and elegant, and reproduces the thought and spirit of
the author with felicity and exactness, in idiomatic English, which one can
read without suspecting it to be not the language in which the work was
originally written. There is scarcely a sentence in which the translation
can be detected. It must have been made _con amore,_ and we can
recommend it as a model to translators, who too often do the work from the
original language into no language. The following, from the opening pages,
is a fair specimen of the thought and style of the author, and of the
clearness, force, and beauty of the translation:

  "Mr. Proudhon, in his Confession, of a Revolutionist, has written these
  remarkable words: 'It is surprising to observe how constantly we find all
  our political questions complicated with theological questions.' There is
  nothing in this to cause surprise, except it be the surprise of Mr.
  Proudhon Theology being the science of God, is the ocean which contains
  and embraces all the sciences, as God is the ocean in which all things
  are contained. All things existed, both prior to and after their
  creation, in the divine mind; because as God made them out of nothing, so
  did he form them according to a model which existed in himself from
  eternity.
{3}
  All things are in God in a profound manner in which effects are in their
  causes, consequences in their principles, reflections in light, and forms
  in their eternal exemplars. In him are united the vastness of the sea,
  the glory or the fields, the harmony of the spheres, the grandeur or the
  universe, the splendor of the stars, and the magnificence of the heavens.
  In him are the measure, weight, and number of all things, and all things
  proceed from him with number, weight, and measure. In him are the
  inviolable and sacred laws of being, and every being has its particular
  law. All that lives, finds in him the laws of life; all that vegetates,
  the laws of vegetation; all that moves, the laws or motion; all that has
  feeling, the law or sensation; all that has understanding, the law of
  intelligence; and all that has liberty, the law of freedom. It may in
  this sense be affirmed, without falling into Pantheism, that all things
  are in God, and God is in all things. This will serve to explain how in
  proportion as faith is impaired in this world, truth is weakened, and how
  the society that turns its back upon God, will find its horizon quickly
  enveloped in frightful obscurity. For this reason religion has been
  considered by all men, and in all ages, as the indestructible foundation
  of human society. _Omnis humana societatis fundamentum convellit qui
  religionem convellit_, says Plato in Book 10 of his laws. According to
  Xenophon (on Socrates), "the most pious cities and nations have always
  been the most durable, and the wisest." Plutarch affirms (contra Colotes)
  'that it is easier to build a city in the air than to establish society
  without a belief in the gods.' Rousseau, in his Social Contract, Book
  iv., ch. viii., observes, 'that a State was never established without
  religion as a foundation.' Voltaire says, in his Treatise on Toleration,
  ch. xx., 'that religion is, on all accounts, necessary wherever society
  exists.' All the legislation of the ancients rests upon a fear of gods.
  Polybius declares that this holy fear is always more requisite in a free
  people than in others. That Rome might be the eternal city, Numa made it
  the holy city. Among the nations of antiquity the Roman was the greatest,
  precisely because it was the most religious. Cesar having one day uttered
  certain words, in open Senate, against the existence of the gods, Cato
  and Cicero arose from their seats and accused the irreverent youth of
  having spoken words fatal to the Republic. It is related of Fabricius, a
  Roman captain, that having heard the philosopher Cineas ridicule the
  Divinity in presence of Pyrrhus, he pronounced these memorable words:
  'May it please the gods, that our enemies follow this doctrine when they
  make war against the Republic.'

  'The decline of faith that produces the decline of truth does not
  necessarily cripple, but certainly misleads the human mind. God, who is
  both compassionate and just, denies truth to guilty souls, but does not
  deprive them of life. He condemns them to error, but not to death. All an
  evidence of this, every one has witnessed those periods of prodigious
  incredulity and of highest culture that have shown in history with a
  phosphorescent light, leaving more of a burning than a luminous track
  behind them. If we carefully contemplate these ages, we shall see that
  their splendor is only the inflamed glare or the lightning's flash. It is
  evident that their brightness is the sudden explosion of their obscure
  but combustible materials, rather than the calm light proceeding from
  purest regions, and serenely spread over heaven's vault by the divine
  pencil of the sovereign painter.

  "What is here said of ages may also be said of men. The absence or the
  possession of faith, the denial of God or the abandonment of truth,
  neither gives them understanding nor deprives them of it. That of the
  unbeliever may be of the highest order, and that of the believer very
  limited; but the greatness of the first is that of an abyss, while the
  second has the holiness of a tabernacle. In the first dwells error, in
  the second truth. In the abyss with error is death, in the tabernacle
  with truth is life. Consequently there can be no hope whatever for those
  communities that renounce the austere worship of truth for the idolatry
  of the intellect. Sophisms produce revolutions and sophists are succeeded
  by hangmen.

  "He possesses political truth who understands the laws to which
  governments are amenable; and he possesses social truth who comprehends,
  the laws to which human societies are answerable. He who knows God knows
  these laws; and he knows God who listens to what he affirms of himself,
  and believes the same. Theology is the science which has for its object
  these affirmations. Whence it follows that every affirmation respecting
  society or government, supposes an affirmation relative to God; or, what
  is the same thing, that every political or social truth necessarily
  resolves itself into a theological truth.

  "If everything is intelligible in God and through God, and theology is
  the science of God, in whom and by whom everything is elucidated,
  theology is the universal science. Such being the case, there is nothing
  not comprised in this science, which has no plural; because totality,
  which constitutes it, has it not. Political and social sciences have no
  existence except as arbitrary classifications of the human mind. Man in
  his feebleness classifies that which in God is characterized by the most
  simple unity. Thus, he distinguishes political from social and religious
  affirmations; while in God there is but one affirmation, indivisible and
  supreme.
{4}
  He who speaks explicitly of what thing soever, and is ignorant that he
  implicitly speaks of God; and who does not know when he discusses
  explicitly any science whatever, that he implicitly illustrates theology,
  has received from God simply the necessary amount of intelligence to
  constitute him a man. Theology, then, considered in its highest
  acceptation, is the perpetual object of all the sciences, even as God is
  the perpetual object of human speculations.

  "Every word that a man utters is a recognition of the Diety, even that
  which curses or denies God. He who rebels against God, and frantically
  exclaims, 'I abhor thee; thou art not!' illustrates a complete system of
  theology, as he does who raises to him a contrite heart, and says, 'Lord,
  have mercy on thy servant, who adores thee.' The first blasphemes him to
  his face, the second prays at his feet, yet both acknowledge him, each in
  his own way; for both pronounce his incommunicable name."

The work shows no great familiarity with the writings of the later
theologians, and no fondness for the style and method of the schools, but
it shows a profound study of the Fathers, and a perfect mastery of
contemporary theories and speculations. The author is a man of the
nineteenth century, with the profound thought of an Augustine, the
eloquence of a Chrysostom, and the tender piety of a Francis of Assissium.
He has studied the epistles of St. Paul, and been touched with the
inspiration of that great apostle's burning zeal and consuming charity. He
observes not always the technical exactness of modern theological
professors, and some French _abbés_ thought they detected in his
_Ensayo_ some grave theological errors, but only because they missed
the signs which they were accustomed to identify with the things signified,
and met with terms and illustrations with which they were unfamiliar. But
he seizes with rare sagacity and firmness the living truth, and presents us
theology as a thing of life and love.

The principles of the essay are catholic, are the real principles of
Christianity and society, set fourth with a clearness, a depth, a logical
force, a truthfulness, a richness of illustration and an eloquence which
have seldom, if ever, been surpassed. But some of the inferences be draws
from them, and some of the applications he makes of them to social and
political science are not such as every Catholic even is prepared to
accept. The author was drawn to religion by domestic afflictions, which
saddened while they softened his heart, and he writes, as he felt, amid the
ruins of a falling world. All things seemed to him gone or going, and he
looked out upon a universal wreck. His spirit is not soured, but his
feelings are tinged with the gloom of the prospect, and while he hopes in
God he well-nigh despairs of the world, of man, of society, of
civilization, above all, of liberty, and sees no means of saving European
society but in the dictatorship or pure despotism acting under the
inspiration and direction of the church. He was evidently more deeply
impressed by what was lost in the primitive fall or original sin than by
what in our nature has survived that catastrophe. He adored the justice of
God displayed in the punishment of the wicked, justified him in all his
dealings with men, but he saw in his providence no mercy for fallen
nations, or a derelict society. This life he regarded as a trial, the earth
as a scene of suffering, a vale of tears, and found in religion a support,
indeed, but hardly a consolation. The Christian has hope in God, but is a
man of sorrows, and his life an expiation. Much of this is true and
scriptural, and this world certainly is not our abiding place, and can
afford us no abiding joy. But this is not saying that there are no
consolations, no abiding joys for us even in this life. Consolations and
joys a Christian has in this world, though they proceed not from it. It can
neither give them nor take them away; yet we taste them even while in it.
This world is not the contradictory of the world to come; it is not heaven,
indeed, and cannot be heaven, yet it is related to heaven as a medium, and
the medium must partake, in some measure, of both the principle and the
end.

{5}

The great merit of the essay is in deducing political and social from
theological principles. This is undoubtedly not only the teaching of the
church, but of all sound philosophy; and what I regard as the principal
error of the book is the desire to transfer to the state the immobility and
unchangeableness which belong to the church, an institution existing by the
direct and immediate appointment of God. The author seems to be as
unwilling to recognize the intervention of man and man's nature in
government and society as in the direct and immediate works of the Creator.
He is no pantheist or Jansenist, and yet be seems to me to make too little
account of the part of second causes, or the activity of creatures; and
sometimes to forget, or almost forget, that grace does not supersede
nature, but supports it, strengthens it, elevates it, and completes it. He
sees only the Divine action in events; or in plain words, he does not make
enough of nature, and does not sufficiently bring out the fact that natural
and supernatural, nature and grace, reason and faith, earth and heaven, are
not antagonistic forces, to be reconciled only by the suppression of the
one or the other, but really parts of one dialectic whole, which, to the
eye that can take in the whole in all its parts, and all the parts in the
whole, in which they are integrated, would appear perfectly consistent with
each other, living the same life in God, and directed by him to one and the
same end. He, therefore, unconsciously and unintentionally, favors or
appears to favor a dualism as un-christian as it is unphilosophical. God
being in his essence dialectical, nothing proceeding from him can be
sophistical, or wanting in logical unity, and one part of his works can
never be opposed to another, or demand its suppression. The one must always
be the complement of the other. Christianity was given to fulfil nature,
not to destroy it. "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the
prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." (St. Matt. v. 17.)

The misapprehension on this subject arises from the ambiguity of the word
_world_. This word is generally used by ascetic writers not to
designate the natural order, but the principles, spirit, and conduct of
those who live for this world alone; who look not beyond this life; who
take the earth not as a medium, but as the end, and seek only the goods
this world offers. These are called worldly, sensual, or carnal-minded
people, and as such contrast with the spiritually minded, or those who look
above and beyond merely sensible goods--to heaven beyond the earth, to a
life beyond the grave, a life of spiritual bliss in indissoluble union with
God, the end of their existence, and their supreme good as well as the
supreme good in itself. In this sense there is a real antagonism between
this world and the next; but when the world is taken in its proper place,
and for what it really is, in the plan of the Creator, there is no
antagonism in the case; and to despise it would be to despise the work of
God, and to neglect it would be not a virtue, but even a sin. This world
has its temptations and its snares, and as long as we remain in the flesh
we are in danger of mistaking it for the end of our existence, and
therefore it is necessary that we be on our guard against its seductions.
But the chief motive that leads souls hungering and bursting for perfection
to retire to the desert or to the monastery is not that they may fly its
temptations, or the enemies to their virtue, for they find greater
temptations to struggle against and fiercer enemies to combat in solitude
than in the thronged city; it is the love of sacrifice, and the longing to
take part with our Lord in his great work of expiation that moves them.
Simply to get rid of the world, to turn the back on society, or to get away
from the duties and cares of the world, is no proper motive for retirement
from the world, and the church permits not her children to do it and enter
a religious order so long as they have duties to their family or their
country to perform.
{6}
Nothing could better prove that the church does not suffer us to contemn or
neglect the natural or temporal order, or regard as of slight importance
the proper discharge of our duties to our families, our country, or natural
society. The same thing is proved by the fact that the process for
canonization cannot go on in a case where the individual has not fulfilled
all his natural duties, growing out of his state or relations in society.
_Gratia supponit naturam_.

In consequence of his tendency to an exclusive asceticism, a tendency which
he owed to the unsettled times in which he lived, and the reaction in his
own mind against the liberalism be had at one time favored, Donoso Cortes
countenanced, to some extent, political absolutism; and had great influence
in leading even eminent Catholics to denounce constitutionalism,
legislative assemblies, publicity, and free political discussion, as if
these things were un-catholic, and inseparable from the political atheism
of the age. There was a moment when the writer of this article himself,
under the charm of his eloquence, and the force of the arguments he drew
from the individual and social crimes committed in the name of liberty and
progress, was almost converted to his side of the question, and supported
popular institutions only because cause they were the law in his own
country. But without pretending that the church enjoins any particular form
of civil polity, or maintaining the infallibility or impeccability of the
people, either collectively or individually, a calmer study of history, and
the recent experience of our own country, have restored me to my early
faith in popular forms of government, or democracy as organized under our
American system, which, though it has its dangers and attendant evils, is,
wherever practicable, the form of government that, upon the whole, best
conforms to those great Catholic principles on which the church herself is
founded.

But the people cannot govern well, any more than kings or kaisers, unless
trained to the exercise of power, and subjected to moral and religious
discipline. It is precisely here that the work of Donoso Cortes has its
value. The reaction which has for a century or two been going on against
that mixture of civil and ecclesiastical government which grew up after the
downfall of the Roman empire in the west, and which was not only natural
but necessary, since the clergy had nearly all the learning, science, and
cultivation of the times, and to which modern society is so deeply indebted
for its civilization, has carried modern statesmen to an opposite extreme,
and resulted in almost universal political atheism. The separation of
church and state in our age means not merely the separation of the church
and the state as corporations or governments, which the popes have always
insisted on, but the separation of political principles from theological
principles, and the subjection of the church and ecclesiastical affairs to
the state. Where monarchy, in its proper sense, obtains, the king or
emperor, and where democracy, save in its American sense, is asserted, the
people, takes the place of God, at least in the political order. Statolatry
is almost as prevalent in our days as idolatry was with the ancient Greeks
and Romans.

Even in our own country, it may be remarked that the general sympathy is
with anti-Christian--especially anti-papal insurrections and revolutions.
We should witness little sympathy with the Cretans and Christians of the
Turkish empire, if they were not understood to be schismatics, who reject
the authority of the pope in spirituals as well as in temporals. Yet, prior
to the treaty of Paris in 1856, the Greek prelates were, under the Turkish
sovereignty, the temporal lords of their people, and the design of that
treaty, so far as relates to the Eastern Christians, was to deprive them of
the last remains of temporal independence, and to complete the conquest of
Mahomet II. The complete subjection of religion to the state is called
religious liberty, the emancipation of conscience.
{7}
Our American press applauds the Italian ministry for laying down the law
for the Italian bishops, restored their sees, from which the state exiled
them, and prescribing them their bounds, beyond which they must not pass.
The Italian State does not, as with us, recognize the freedom and
independence of the Spiritual order, but at best only tolerates it. It
asserts not only the freedom and independence of the state in face of the
church, but its supremacy, its right to govern the church, or at least to
define the limits within which it may exist and operate.

This is what our age understands by the separation of church and state. If
it foregoes, at any time or place, the authority to govern the church, it
still holds that it has the right to govern churchmen the same as any other
class of persons; that the civil law is the supreme law of the land; and
that religion, when it happens to conflict with it, must give way to it.
The law of the state is the supreme law. This is everywhere the doctrine of
European liberals, and the doctrine they reduce to practice wherever they
have the power, and hence the reason why the church visits them with her
censures. Many devout believers think the separation of church and state
must mean this, and can mean nothing else, and therefore that the union of
church and state must mean a return to the old mixture of civil and
ecclesiastical government of the middle ages. Hence a Donoso Cortes and a
Baron Ricasoli are on this point in singular accord. Our American press,
which takes its cue principally from European liberals, takes the same
view, and understands both the separation and the union of church and state
in the same sense.

Yet the American solution of the mutual relations of church and state is a
living proof, a practical demonstration that they are wrong. Here the state
does not tolerate the church, nor the church either enslave or tolerate the
state, because the state recognizes the freedom or conscience, and its
independence of all secular control. My church is my conscience, and my
conscience being free here, my church is free, and for me and all
Catholics, in the free exercise of her full spiritual authority. Here it is
not the state that bounds conscience, but conscience that bounds the state.
The state here is bound by its own constitution to respect and protect the
rights of the citizen. Among these rights, the most precious is the right
of conscience--the right to the free exercise of my religion. This right
does not decide what the civil law shall be, but it does decide what it
shall not be. Any law abridging my right of conscience--that is, the
freedom of my church--is unconstitutional, and, so far, null and void.
This, which is my right, is equally the right of every other citizen,
whether his conscience--that is, his church--agrees with mine or not. The
Catholic and the Protestant stand on the same footing before the law, and
the conscience of each is free before the state, and a limit beyond which
the civil law cannot extend its jurisdiction. Here, then, is a separation
of church and state that does not enslave the church, and a union of church
and state that does not enslave the state, or interfere with its free and
independent action in its own proper sphere. The church maintains her
independence and her superiority as representing the spiritual order, for
she governs those who are within, not those who are without, and the state
acts in harmony, not in conflict with her, because it confines its action--
where it has power--to things temporal.

The only restriction, on any side, is, that the citizen must so assert his
own right of conscience as not to abridge the equal right of conscience in
his fellow-citizen who differs from him. Of course the freedom of
conscience cannot be made a pretext for disturbing the public peace, or
outraging public decency, nor can it be suffered to be worn as a cloak to
cover dissoluteness of manners or the transgression of the universal moral
law; when it is so made or worn it ceases to be the _right_ of
conscience, ceases to be conscience at all, and the state has authority to
intervene and protect the public peace and public decency.
{8}
It may, therefore, suppress the Mormon concubinage, and require the Latter
Day Saints to conform to the marriage law as recognized by the whole
civilized world, alike in the interests of religion and of civilization.
But beyond this the state cannot go, at least with us.

It may be doubted whether this American system is practicable in any but a
republican country--under a government based on equal rights, not on
privilege, whether the privilege of the one, the few, or the many.
Democracy, as Europeans understand it, is not based on equal rights, but is
only the system of privilege, if I may so speak, expanded. It recognizes no
equal rights, because it recognizes no rights of the individual at all
before the state. It is the pagan republic which asserts the universal and
absolute supremacy of the state. The American democracy is Christian, not
pagan, and asserts, for every citizen, even the meanest, equal rights,
which the state must treated as sacred and inviolable. It is because our
system is based on equal rights, not on privilege--on rights held not from
the state, but which the state is bound to recognize and protect, that
American democracy, instead of subjecting religion to the state, secures
its freedom and independence.

Donoso Cortes can no more understand this than can the European democrat,
because he has no conception of the equal rights of all men before the
state; or rather, because he has no conception of the rights of man. Man,
he says, has no rights; he has only duties. This is true, when we speak of
man in relation to his Maker. The thing made has no right to say to the
maker, "Why hast thou made me thus?" Man has only duties before God,
because he owes to him all he is, has, or can do, and he finds beatitude in
discharging his duties to God, because God is good, the good in itself, and
would not be God and could not be creator if be were not. But that man has
no rights in relation to society, to the state, or to his fellow man, is
not true. Otherwise there could be no justice between man and man, between
the individual and society, or the citizen and the state, and no injustice,
for there is no injustice where no right is violated. Denying or
misconceiving the rights of man, and conceiving the state as based on
privilege, not on equal rights, the Spaniard is unable to conceive it
possible to assert the freedom and independence of the state, without
denying the freedom and independence of the church.

But, if republican institutions based on equal rights are necessary to
secure the freedom and independence of the church, the freedom and
independence of the church, on the other hand, are no less necessary to the
maintenance of such institutions. I say, _of the church_, rather than
of religion, because I choose to speak of things in the concrete rather
than in the abstract, and because it is only as concreted in the church
that the freedom and independence of religion can be assailed, or that
religion has power to protect or give security to institutions based on
equal rights. The church is concrete religion. Whether there is more than
one church, or which of the thousand and one claimants is the true church,
is not now the question. The answer of the Catholic is not doubtful. At
present I am treating the question of equal rights, and asking no more for
the church before the state than for the several sects. Of course, I
recognize none of the sects as the church, but I am free to say that I
regard even the lowest of them as better for society than any form of
downright infidelity. There is something in common between Catholics and
the sects that confess Christ as the Son of God, incarnate for our
redemption and salvation, which there is not, and cannot be, between us and
those who confess not Christ at all. But this is a digression.

{9}

Equal rights must have a foundation, something on which to stand. They
cannot stand on the state or civil society, for that would deny them to be
rights at all, and reduce them to simple privileges granted by the state
and revocable at its will. This is precisely the error of the European
liberals, who invariably confound right with privilege. All European
society has been, and still is to a great extent, based on privilege, not
right. Thus in England you have the rights--more properly, the privileges
or franchises--of Englishman, but no rights of man which parliament is
bound to recognize and protect as such. There is no right or freedom of
conscience which the state must respect as sacred and inviolable; there is
only toleration, more or less general. In the new kingdom of Italy there
are the privileges and franchises of Italians, and, within certain limits,
toleration for the church. Her bishops may exercise their spiritual
functions so long as they do not incur the displeasure of the state. The
supremacy of the state is asserted, and the ecclesiastical administration
is at the mercy of the civil. It is so in every European state, because in
none of them is the state based on equal rights. The United States are the
only state in the world that is so based. Our political system is based on
right, not privilege, and the equal rights of all men.

The state with us rests on equal rights of all men; but on what do the
equal rights themselves rest? What supports or upholds them? The state
covers or represents the whole temporal order, and they, therefore, have
not, and cannot have, their basis or support in that order. Besides the
temporal there is no order but the spiritual, covered or represented by the
church. The equal rights, then, which are with us the basis of the state,
depend themselves on the church or spiritual order for their support. Take
away that order or remove the church, or even suppress the freedom and
independence of the church, and you leave them without any support at all.
The absolutism of the state follows, then, as a necessary consequence, and
might usurps the place of right. Hence political principles must find their
support in theology, and the separation of church and state in the sense of
separating political from theological principles is as hostile to the state
as to the church, and to liberty as to religion. It is not easy to
controvert this conclusion, if we consider whence our rights are derived,
and on what they depend for their reality and support. These rights, which
we do not derive from the state or civil society, and hold independently of
it, among which the Declaration of Independence enumerates "life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness," which it asserts to be "inalienable," whence
do we hold them but from God, our Creator? This is what is meant when they
are called the natural rights of man. They are called natural rights,
because rights held under the natural law, but the natural law in the sense
of the jurists and theologians, not in the sense of the physicists or
natural philosophers--a moral law addressed to reason and free-will, and
binding upon all men, whatever their state or position; not a physical law,
like that by which clouds are formed, seeds germinate, or heavy bodies tend
to the centre of the earth; for it is a law that does not execute itself
and is not executed at all without the action of the reason and will of
society. It is necessarily a law prescribed by the Author of nature, and is
called the natural law, the law of natural justice, or the moral law, in
distinction from the revealed or supernatural law, because promulgated by
the supreme Lawgiver through natural reason, or the reason common to all
men, which is itself in intimate relation with the Divine Reason.

{10}

These natural equal rights are the law for the state or civil authority,
and every law of the state that violates them violates natural justice, and
is by that fact null and void; is, as St. Augustine says, and St. Thomas
after him, "Violence rather than law," and can never be binding on the
civil courts, though human courts not unfrequently enforce such laws. Not
being derived from the state or civil society, these rights are evidently
not in the temporal order, or the same order with the state, and therefore
must have, as we have seen, their basis in the spiritual order, that is, in
theology, or have no basis at all.

The existence of God as the creator and upholder of nature, I do not here
undertake to prove; for that has been done in the papers on _The Problems
of the Age_, which have appeared in this magazine. I am not arguing
against atheism in general, but only against what is called political
atheism, or the doctrine that theology, and therefore the church, has
nothing to do with politics. The state, with us, is based on the equal
rights, not equal privileges, of all men; and if these equal rights have no
real and solid basis beyond and independent of civil society, the state
itself has no real basis, and is a _chateau d'Espagne_, or a mere
castle in the air. Hence political atheism is not only the exclusion of the
church from politics, but the denial of the state itself, and the
substitution for it of mere physical force. Political atheism cannot be
asserted without atheism in general, without, in fact, denying all
existence, and, therefore, of necessity, all right. Political atheism is,
then, alike destructive of religion and politics, church and state, of
authority and liberty. Deny all right independent of the state, and the
citizen can have no right not derived from the state, which denies all
liberty; deny all right independent of the state, the state itself can have
no right to govern, unless the state itself be God, which would be
statolatry, alike absurd and blasphemous.

The rights of the state and of the citizen, alike must be derived from God,
and have a theological basis, or be no rights at all, but words without
meaning. There is then no such separation between politics and theology as
European democracy asserts. Such separation is unphilosophical, and against
the truth of things. It has been so held in all ages and nations of the
world. All the great theologians, philosophers, and moralists of the human
race have always held polities to be a branch of ethics, or morals, and
that branch which treats of the application of the catholic principles of
theology to society, or the social relations of mankind. The permanent,
universal, and invariable principles of civil society are all theological
principles, for there are no such principles outside of theology, and the
office of the state is to apply these principles only to what is local,
temporal, and variable. It is evident then that principles, properly so
called, lie in the theological order, and come within the province of the
theologian, not of the statesman, and are therefore to be determined by the
spiritual society, not by the civil.

It is, then, the spiritual not the temporal, religion not politics, that
asserts and maintains these rights, and religion does it in asserting and
maintaining the right of conscience, which is the right of God, and the
basis of all rights. The right of conscience is exemption from all merely
human authority--a right to be held by all civil society as sacred and
inviolable; and is the first and impassable barrier to the power of the
state. The state cannot pass it without violence, without the most
outrageous tyranny. It is then religion, not the state, that asserts and
maintains freedom; for the state when it acts, acts as authority, not as
liberty. So, on the other hand, is it religion that asserts and maintains
the authority, I say, not the force, of the state. The authority of the
state is its right to govern. In respect to civil society itself, it is
liberty; in respect to citizens, it is authority. Being a right on the part
of the state or society, it, like all other rights, lies in the spiritual
order, and is equally sacred and inviolable.
{11}
Religion, then, while it makes it the duty of the state to recognize and
protect the rights of the individual citizen, makes it the duty of the
individual citizen to recognize, respect, and defend the rights of the
state or society. The duty in both cases is a religious duty, because all
right is held from God, and only God can enjoin duty, or bind conscience.
Deny God, and you deny religion; deny religion, and you deny all duty and
all right;--alike the rights and duties of the state and the rights and
duties of the individual citizen, and, therefore, alike both liberty and
authority, which being correlatives can never exist the one without the
other. There is no denying this conclusion without denying reason itself.

But religion, as an abstract theory, is powerless, as are all abstractions,
and exists only as concreted, and religion in the concrete is the church.
In the state and in the individual, God operates indeed, but mediately,
through natural or secondary causes; but in the church immediately, for the
church is his body, and her vitality is the Holy Ghost, who dwells in her,
and is to her something like what the soul is to the body, _forma
corporis_. Religion without the church is a theory or a vague sentiment;
religion concreted in the church is a living reality, a power, and is
efficient in vindicating both rights and duties, and affording a solid
support to both liberty and authority. The sects, as far as they go, are
concrete religion, but not religion in its unity and integrity. They are
better than nothing; but lacking the unity and catholicity of truth, and
being divided and subdivided among themselves, they can very imperfectly
perform the office of religion or the Catholic Church. They are unable to
make head against material force, and to maintain with any efficiency the
rights of the spiritual against the encroachments of the temporal, or to
prevent the state from asserting its own absolute supremacy. They exist not
by a recognized right, but by state tolerance; they are suffered to exist
and are protected, because they become auxiliaries of the state in its
efforts to break the power and influence of the church, whose authority in
spirituals is more repugnant to them then is state supremacy. Hence we find
that wherever, except in the United States, the spiritual power is broken
and divided into a great variety of sects, the state claims to be supreme
alike in spirituals and temporals; and it is very doubtful if the freedom
and independence of the spiritual order could long be preserved even in our
country should our sectarian divisions continue. These divisions are
already generating a wide-spread indifference to religion, almost a
contempt for it; while there are manifest and growing tendencies to extend
the authority of the state beyond its legitimate bounds into the domain of
individual liberty. The unity and catholicity of the church, representing
the unity and catholicity of the spiritual order, will soon be seen to be
necessary to preserve our free institutions.

It was concrete religion, in its unity and catholicity embodied in the
church as an institution, that was able during the middle ages to assert
the freedom and independence of the spiritual order, which is only another
term for the freedom and independence of conscience, against the political
order. She was thus constituted a living reality, a concrete power, and the
powers of the earth had to reckon with her. Constituted as society then
was, she needed and exercised more positive power in the temporal order
than was agreeable to her, or than is necessary in a society constituted
like ours. The republic, then, was pagan, and sought to be supreme
everywhere and in everything, or in other words, to subject the spiritual
order to the temporal, as it was in pagan Rome, and for the most part
continued to be even in Christian Rome of the East, till its conquest by
the Turks. Hence the relation between Peter and Cesar, between the pope and
emperor, was ordinarily that of antagonism.
{12}
It was necessary that the pope should be clothed with a power that could
control princes, and force them to respect the rights of conscience, or the
independence of the church, which to be sufficient must be positive as well
as negative. The temporal authority, or the authority of the church over
the temporal, claimed and exercised over secular princes seeking to combine
in themselves both the imperial and the pontifical power, was no
usurpation, and rested on no grant of civil society, or _jus
publicum_, as has sometimes been asserted, but grew out of the necessity
of the case; its justification was in its necessity to maintain her own
independence in spirituals, or the freedom of conscience. It was her right
as representing the spiritual order, and would be her right still in a
similarly constituted society, and the modern world is reaping in its
advanced civilization the fruits of her having claimed and exercised it.

The necessity for claiming and exercising that power in a society
constituted as is the American does not exist, because in our society the
state frankly concedes all that she was in those ages struggling for. There
was nothing which Gregory VII., Innocent III., Boniface VIII., and other
great popes struggled for against the German emperors, the kings of France,
Aragon, and England, and the Italian republics, that is not recognized here
by our republic to be the right of the spiritual order. Here the old
antagonism between church and state does not exist. There is here a certain
antagonism, no doubt, between the church and the sects, but none between
the church and the state or civil society. Here the church has, so far as
civil society is concerned, all that she has ever claimed, all that she has
ever struggled for. Here she is perfectly free. She summons her prelates to
meet in council when she pleases, and promulgates her decrees for the
spiritual government of her children without leave asked or obtained. The
_placet_ of the civil power is not needed, is neither solicited nor
accepted. She erects and fills sees as she judges proper, founds and
conducts schools, colleges, and seminaries in her own way, without let or
hindrance; she manages her own temporalities, not by virtue of a grant or
concession of the state, but as her acknowledged right, held as the right
of conscience, independently of the state. Here she has nothing to conquer
from the state, for the civil law affords her the same protection for her
property that it does to the citizen for his; and therefore all that she
can seek in relation to the constitution of our civil society, is that it
should remain unaltered.

True, the sects have before civil society the same freedom that she has,
but the state protects her from any violence they might be disposed to
offer her. They are not permitted to rob her of her churches, desecrate her
altars, molest her worship, or interfere with her management of her own
affairs. Their freedom in no respect whatever abridges hers, and whatever
controversy she may have with them, it is entirely on questions with which
civil society has nothing to do, which are wholly within the spiritual
order, and which could not be settled by physical force, if she had it at
her command, and was disposed to use it. Lying in the spiritual order, they
are independent of the state, and it has no right to interfere with them.
There is nothing, then, in the freedom of the sects to interfere with the
fullest liberty of the church, so long as the state recognizes and protect
her freedom and independence as well as theirs. There is nothing, then,
that the church can receive from civil society, that she has not in the
United States, and guaranteed to her by the whole force of the civil
constitution.

{13}

It is one of the mysteries of Providence that what the popes for ages
struggled for and still struggle for in the old world, and in all parts of
the new world originally colonized by Catholic states, should for the first
time in history be fully realized in a society founded by the most
anti-papal people on earth, who held the church to be the Scarlet Lady of
the Apocalypse. Surely, they builded better than they knew. But explain it
as you will, such is the fact. The United States is the only country in the
world where the church is really free. It would seem that both state and
church had to emigrate to the new world to escape the antagonisms of the
old, and to find a field for the free and untrammeled development of each.
It is idle to fear that the church will ever seek to disturb the order
established here, for she supports no principle and has no interest that
would lead her to do it. Individual Catholics, affected by the relations
that have subsisted between church and state in the old world, and not
aware that the church has here all that she has ever struggled for against
kings and princes, may think that the church lacks here some advantages
which she ought to have, or may think it desirable to reproduce here the
order of things which they have been accustomed to elsewhere, and which in
fact the church has submitted to as the best she could get, but has never
fully approved. These, however, are few, and are soon corrected by
experience, soon convinced that the real solution of the questions which
have so long and often so fearfully agitated the nations of Europe, has
been providentially obtained by the American people. The church has no wish
to alter the relation that exists with us between her and the state.

But there is a very important question for the American people to ask
themselves. With the multiplicity of sects, the growing indifference to
religion, and the political atheism consciously or unconsciously fostered
by a large portion of the secular press and but feebly resisted by the
religious press, will they be able to reserve the freedom and independence
of the spiritual order, or protect the equal rights on which our political
institutions are founded? Instead of asking, as some do, are the presence
and extension of the church dangerous to our institutions, should they not
rather ask, is she not necessary to their safety? The higher question to be
addressed to the sects undoubtedly is, can men save their souls without the
church? but in addressing politicians and patriots, it is not beneath the
Catholic even to ask if the republic, the authority of the state, and the
liberty of the citizen, both of which rest on the freedom and authority of
conscience, can be saved or preserved without her? Are not the unity and
catholicity which she asserts and represents, and which the sects break and
discard, necessary to maintain the freedom and independence of the
spiritual order against the constant tendency of the political order and
material interests to invade and subject it?

This is the great question for American patriots and statesman, and I have
written in vain, if this article does not at least suggest the answer.
Hitherto almost everywhere Catholics have found themselves obliged to
contend against the civil power to gain the freedom and independence of
their church, and at the same time, in these later centuries, to sustain
that power, even though hostile to liberty, in order to save society from
dissolution. Here they have to do neither, for here church and state,
liberty and authority, are in harmonious relation, and form really, as they
should, but two distinct parts of one whole; _distinct_, I say, not
_separate_ parts. There is here a true _union_, not _unity_,
of church and state--a union without which neither the liberty of the
citizen nor the authority of the state has any solid basis or support. The
duty of the Catholic on this question is, it seems to me, to do his best to
preserve this union as it is, and to combat every influence or tendency
hostile to it.

{14}

Donoso Cortes demonstrates most clearly that religion is the basis of
society and politics, but he is apparently disposed to assert the unity of
church and state, with European liberals, but differing from them by
absorbing the state in the church, or by virtually suppressing it; while
they would suppress the church or absorb her in the state. My endeavor in
what I have written has been to preserve both, and to defend not the unity,
but the union of church and state. This union in my judgment, has never
existed or been practicable in the old world, and I do not believe it is
even yet practicable there, and consequently, I regard whatever tends there
to weaken the political influence of the church as unfavorable to
civilization, and favorable only to political atheism, virtually asserted
by every European state, unless Belgium be an exception. But here the union
really exists, in the most perfect form that I am able to conceive it; and
for the harmonious progress of real civilization, we only need the church,
the real guardian of all rights that exist independently of civil society,
to become sufficiently diffused or to embrace a sufficient number of the
people in her communion; to preserve that union intact, from whatever
quarter it may be assailed.

This, we are permitted to hope, will ere long be the case. The sects,
seeing their freedom and independence require its maintenance, must in this
respect make common cause with us; and hence the spiritual power is
probably already nearly, if not quite strong enough to maintain it against
any and every enemy that may arise. As to the controversy between the
church and the sects, I do not expect that to end very soon; but truth is
mighty and in the end will prevail They will, no doubt, struggle to the
last, but as the state cannot intervene in the dispute, and must maintain
an open field for the combatants, I have no doubt that they will yield at
last, because the church has the truth in its unity and integrity, and they
have it only as disunited or broken in scattered fragments. Reason demands
unity and catholicity, and where reason is free, and assisted by grace, she
must win the victory.

------

    Original

    On The Olive-branches In The Garden Of Gethsemane.


  Unto the spreading olive-branches thus spake I:
    "Emblems of peace!
  Why do ye mock His bitter grief?
  He cometh here to seek relief:
    And ye His woes increase!"

  When for the silent trees my Jesus made reply:
    "It should be so;
  To men the sign of peace and life,
  To Me should be of death and strife,
    Who save them by My woe."

------

{15}

    Translated from Le Correspondant

    The Story of A Sister.
    by Augustin Cochin.

Would you wish to see happiness realized on earth? It reigned in the palace
of Simonetti at Rome, in the family of the ambassador of France, in the
month of May, 1830. The ambassador was the Count de la Ferronaya. He had
been for a long time ambassador in Russia, where his character, his natural
gifts, his integrity, had triumphed over the reserve and _hauteur_ of
the Emperor Nicholas, who treated him as a friend. He was also the friend
of the King of France, who, in 1828, appointed him minister of foreign
affairs. Handsome, brilliant, brave, intelligent, he bore in his heart and
in his appearance the qualities which constitute the true French gentleman.
He had married the niece of the devoted, faithful Duchess of Tourzel, who
accompanied the king and queen to Varennes as governess to their children.
Three boys and four girls were the result of this happy marriage. This
family, endowed with birth, rank, and so many gifts of this world, were
united at Rome, under the most beautiful sky, in the most beautiful month
of the year, in the sunny brightness of an unclouded existence. The
revolution of July, 1830, having wrested the monarchy from the Bourbons,
the Ferronays were not unhappy. God had not yet taken everything from them,
he had only taken their riches. The father, by his fidelity, had grown in
public respect; his sons and daughters had been prepared by a solid
education for industry and self-sacrifice. For fifteen years the parents
had enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity, but they had not forgotten their days
of exile; and when poverty overtook them they met her as an old friend,
meekly bowing to the hand from whom all changes come. They went to live in
retirement at Castellamare, where their house was the image of their life,
a small chamber and a magnificent view, a radiant horizon seen from a
narrow dwelling. Soon after we find them at Chiaja, gay, happy, the
brothers quitting home for an active life, the sisters loving each other
devotedly, gathering flowers in Lady Acton's garden to wear them at the
next ball, presented at court, deprived of their fortune, but still happy;
tasting the pleasure that we find in traveling, and that we ought to find
in the journey of life--the pleasure which consists in admiring ardently
what we do process without the vanity of personal possession. However, this
delightful life was not exempt from danger: a stranger has too much
liberty; he is not subject to the supervision of relatives, friends,
neighbors, or rivals, who exercise a control which, though often trying, is
more often useful. Diplomatic families, above all, accustomed to be treated
with consideration, to form transient acquaintances, passing from court to
court, from St. Petersburg to London, from London to Rome, live in a
cosmopolitan world, the most delightful, the most amusing, but by far the
most dangerous. The family of M. de la Ferronays had not long escaped this
danger, which was rendered still more seductive under the charming sky and
in the luxurious climate of Italy. However, we do not pretend that this
story introduces us to exceptional creatures; this is not a voyage to the
country of the angels; we are still upon earth with common mortals. Albert,
one of the younger brothers, was the first to perceive the dangers of this
too self-indulgent life, and he had the courage to escape from it.
{16}
He was a brave heart in a frail body; be was capable of making a mistake,
but utterly incapable of excusing an unworthy action by an unworthy
doctrine. Providence gave him the support of two friends, who drew him at
eighteen from the enervating influences which he held in such horror, and
the elevating power of whose example transformed the child into a man. Both
survived him. M. Rio had been placed in the foreign office by M. de la
Ferronays; he refused to change his opinions to please M. Polignac, or to
abjure his oath to satisfy M. Guizot. M. de Polignac and M. Guizot,
respecting his courage and firmness, had not forsaken him; and making use
of his leisure to gratify his tastes as well as to show his gratitude, he
begged his old chief to allow him to return to his son the favors that he
had received from himself, and to permit him to take Albert to be his
companion in that delightful journey among the churches and classical
associations of Italy, to which we owe his great work on Christian Art. The
other friend, the Count de Montalembert, was younger, his heart was filled
with love of the church and of liberty; and devoting himself to their
service, with an eloquence and activity which nothing could tire, he
arrived in Italy to rejoin MM de Lamennais and Lacordaire. They set out all
three for Rome in the month of January, 1832, and nothing appears more rare
and more touching than the position of the gifted trio who arrived in the
eternal city, the first in search of beauty, the second in pursuit of
truth, and the third going unconsciously to encounter the pure love of his
life. At St. Petersburg M. de la Ferronays had become acquainted with the
family of the Count d'Alopeus, Russian minister at Berlin, whose daughter,
Alexandrine, was much attached to Albert's sisters. After the death of her
husband, in 1831, the Countess d'Alopeus came to Rome, and the young people
met for the first time on the 1st of January, 1832.

We must read in Le Recit d'une Soeur, or rather in the story of
Alexandrine, a journal which begins at this date, the origin, the progress,
the incidents, and the development of the pure, innocent love of
Alexandrine and Albert de Ferronays; those conversations which touch so
deeply the heart; the friendship which changes into a warmer sentiment the
name of brother which no longer satisfies; and at last the words "I love
you" whispered on the steps of St. Peter's one beautiful evening in spring.
A journey to Naples united the two families at Vomero, in the pretty villa
of Trecase. We passed the greatest parts of our evenings on the terrace.
Everything was enchanting; the two gulfs, the shores, Vesuvius, the sky
gleaming with stars, the air breathing perfume above all to love--to love,
yet to be able to speak of God. Delightful and innocent hours, who would
wish to efface you from these pages, and who would wish not to have known
your happiness!

But I hear stern voices cry out in alarm, lest this book should fall into
the hands of young girls. "This book," they say, "is not written for them."
Is it then necessary because we are Christians, to cast down our eyes and
blush, when we hear those sacred words:  Reason, love, liberty? What would
life be without these words? Ah! you may allow your daughters' eyes,
without fear, to wander over these brilliant pages, if they will only turn
the leaves, and read to the end, to learn the uncertainty of  human hope,
the length of human suffering, the gentle consolations of faith, and the
beauty of this holy union of tenderness and purity, under the protection of
God.

In the month of November, it was thought better that Albert and Alexandrine
should separate. They were engaged, but one was without fortune, the other
was a Protestant. Their friends wished them to reflect, to try the strength
of their attachment. It was absence without pain, full of hope. After three
months Albert came back.
{17}
The same family life recommenced, full of little home scenes; _naïve_,
tender, sweet. This continued for three more months, short but happy, sunny
days without clouds; and doubtless the beauty of nature, the enchantment of
an innocent affection, the presence of God, formed a paradise around and
above them.

"On Holy Thursday," wrote Alexandrine, "my mother allowed me to go with my
friends, to _Tenebrae_ at the chapel of the palace, to hear the
charming music. In spite of my frivolity, the beautiful chapel, the
singing, and above all, perhaps, the happiness of praying with Albert,
inspired me to such a degree, that I prayed with gentleness and
recollection. I was pleased to have the air of a Catholic. M. de La
Ferronays took us there, and the return on foot was delightful. It was
bright moonlight, and the air was heavy with the perfumes of spring. We
went into several churches to pray before the holy tomb. Albert and I threw
ourselves upon our knees, one besides the other, on the pavement of the
church. I remember that I felt an indescribable calm; and I don't know what
I asked from God, but I felt that we both implored his protection for us,
and that, we felt it realized." The two families separated on the 30th of
April. Alexandrine went with her mother to Germany, Madame de Ferronays
took her two oldest daughters and Albert to France, and their father placed
the two youngest in the convent de la Trinité du Mont at Rome. They left
Naples together, but separated at Civita Vecchia. Albert not feeling well,
his father kept him with him; leaving him at the inn, while he took his
wife and children to the wharf for embarkation. He embraced them, following
with his eyes the receding vessel, sending kisses from afar to the
fast-fading shadows; and then when the last faint smoke of the steamer
disappears in the circle of the horizon, he sighs, oppressed with a weight
to which all are familiar, the heavy weight of loneliness which is
inseparable from farewell words to those we love. He returned silently and
sadly to the inn, where a frightful spectacle met his eyes. Albert is
dying! They are bleeding him; one moment later he would be dead. It is
necessary to read for oneself in his own words, the letters of a father to
a mother. A father alone, a stranger in an inn, beside the deathbed of his
child. "We were kept in an agony of suspense from three o'clock until
seven. At seven the perspiration which, until then, had resisted all our
efforts, this welcome perspiration showed itself, and became excessive. O
my friend! with what faith, with what fervor of gratitude, I thanked
heaven! How everything changes its nature and aspect when we nurse an
invalid whom we love! The physicians say that this dreadful crisis will
re-establish his health. He is saved! O my God! I Frank thee! for today I
can feel only joy. O all you who are loved by heaven! give thanks for me,
and ask God to smite me, but to spare my poor children." During this time
Mademoiselle Alopeus had arrived in Rome, and was once more amid the scenes
and associates where she first met Albert, when she learned that, instead
of returning to France, he was dying at Civita Vecchia. In despair, she
wrote to him, and wished to fly to him; she could not do so, and she
quitted Rome without seeing him, feeling that he was only more dear to her
because she had so nearly lost him. "At Viterbo," she writes, "where we
slept, I heard them speak of the death of a young man, whose body was
exposed in the neighboring church; this distressed me. I could not bear to
hear anything that reminded me that Albert could die."


  Eugenie To Alexandrine.

"I pray for you, for you and Pauline, for Pauline and you. I do not mention
Albert. Albert is comprehended in you; it is the same prayer. God has loved
him; God has spared him. God will bless him, and to bless him is to bless
you. With what fervor have I repeated my favorite prayer that God would
take my share of happiness and unite it to yours, that you may have a
double portion.
{18}
This desire realized would insure my bliss." In order that nothing might be
wanting in this union of noble souls, Albert, just convalescent, writes to
his friends, Montalembert and Rio, letters full of energy and confidence.
Calm and serenity succeeded to this anxiety and disquiet. We find the two
families united at Rome in September, 1833, where the young sister, Olga,
makes her first communion. They then went to Naples, where Albert met them,
looking so well that his health had never seemed so perfectly established.
It was Alexandrine's health which, at this time, gave them cause for
anxiety. Her mind was distressed, though she did her best to conceal her
trouble. Her mother had not failed during their travels in Germany to
represent to her Albert's bad health and his poverty. Happily he had
recovered his health, but he was still poor. I do not know what prudent
parents will say, but I agree with Monsieur de la Ferronays, who wrote thus
to his wife: "They will be poor, but they will be truly happy. I have
neither the courage nor the wish to oppose them; you will not be more cruel
than I am." Alexandrine was still suffering. She was lying sadly on the
sofa one evening at twilight, when her sister came to her, and told her
that her wishes were realized; that she might look upon Albert as her
future husband. These joyful tidings worked her cure--happiness is the best
medicine. The marriage of Monsieur and Madame Albert de la Ferronays was
preceded by that of the Countess d'Alopeus with the Prince Paul Lepoukhyn.
Many dreary months of waiting elapsed, but I will not resume the letters at
this period--one word is sufficient. Lovers are always permitted to repeat
the same things. It was at this time that the sad revolt of M. de Lamennais
took place, and Albert causelessly, but nobly anxious, writes thus to his
friend: "Let us throw ourselves at the foot of the cross, which is the
foundation of the church, not to undermine her, but to support and defend
her; but, above all, I pray you do not commit yourself to M. de Lamennais.
You know the happiness which is to be mine in the spring; but I will
postpone it and fly to you if you wish me to do so." To these enthusiastic
words his friend replied: "There is not a word in your letter which does
not accord with all I have thought and desired. I used every effort to
induce M. de Lamennais to do as I have done--to bow to the inscrutable
dispensations of providence; and humbly, and with docility, to await the
will of heaven." But we must leave the two friends to return to the
preparations for the marriage, which was at last celebrated on the 17th of
April, 1834. In the evening a carriage took Albert and Alexandrine to
Castellamare. They were handsome, talented, good, and happy, and they
loved.

Blissful dream! which as yet knew no awakening. If we could judge of life
by outward appearances, we would believe that these bright anticipations
would last for ever. All the family rejoined the newly married couple at
Castellamare. "A staircase, embowered by vines and roses, led to the pretty
house, the ground floor of which, occupied by Albert and Alexandrine,
opened by large windows into the garden. Charles and Emma occupied the
first floor; my parents, Fernand, my sisters and myself the second, and at
each story these terraces communicated by outside staircases. We were
always in communication by these terraces, and were only too glad of an
excuse to be together, for never was a family more perfectly, more happily
united." The sister who painted this little picture, which seems bathed in
sunlight, added to the happiness of all during this pleasant summer, by her
marriage; and her younger sister, Eugenie, melancholy and enthusiastic,
overpowered with happiness, exclaimed, "Oh! if life is so delightful, what
must be the joy of heaven; death is then better than all!"
{19}
From Castellamare they went to Sorrento, thence to Rome, then to Pisa,
where they spent the winter, and where they were joined by their faithful
friend, like themselves young, intelligent, and amiable. "You can imagine,"
wrote Albert to his sister, "that he does not render our life less
charming." "He left us in tears," writes Alexandrine. This friend was the
Count de Montalembert. From Pisa M. and Madame de la Ferronays embarked for
Naples in the month of March, and thence a month later for Malta, _en
route_ for the east. This journey was full of amusing and piquant little
incidents. Friendship and affection followed them wherever they went. What
delight to visit Castellamare, Sorrento, Pisa, Naples, Malta, Smyrna,
Constantinople, Odessa, Vienna, Venice, at twenty years of age with hearts
full of love! "The dim light of my lamp falling on her dear head--is not
this worth all the world?" writes Albert. Alexandrine was filled with
enthusiasm on returning to Italy. "O dear Italy!" she cries, "I return to
thee for the ninetieth time, and always with renewed pleasure." But alas!
this journey, made under these happy auspices, resembled the course of the
inhabitant of the seas whom the harpoon of the fisherman has wounded, and
who plunges and escapes in agitation and affright, carrying the iron in his
side. The health of Albert and the religion of Alexandrine were the two
poisons hidden under this smiling exterior. Ten days after his marriage,
Albert in putting his handkerchief to his mouth, drew it away covered with
blood. At Pisa he was better, at Constantinople quite well, at Rouen he was
at death's-door. At Venice he was again better, and the husband and wife
went together to Lido.

While the wife was disturbed for the health of her husband, he was
trembling for more important interests. From the commencement of their
love, Albert's most ardent desire had been to see Alexandrine kneel at the
same altar, and practice the same faith, as himself. This hope seemed sure
of realization when they married, for God was ever with them in their
happiest hours; since their marriage a feeling of delicacy had kept them
silent on the great subjects of conversion. Albert did not wish that
Alexandrine should be constrained by her affection for him, and she feared
for herself the same powerful influence. She was not willing to sacrifice
her reason to the dictates of her heart, and dreading the displeasure of
her mother, she dreaded still more the censures of conscience. She desired
to submit to conviction, and to resist the pleadings of her love. We
recognize here the transparent sincerity of a character of which Albert
said truly, "I never saw in her the slightest affectation."

Thus Albert's health and Alexandrine's religion agitated them both with a
constant, silent anxiety, which introduces something tragical and sorrowful
into their history. Being prevented by his health from devoting himself to
the service of his country and his church, Albert had concentrated all his
desires on the establishment of truth in the heart dearest to him. Nothing
could be more touching than Alexandrine's care for Albert's health. The
charming Swede, the graceful daughter of the North, the belle of the
Neapolitan _fêtes_, was transformed into the attentive nurse, hiding
her fears, and accepting disagreeable duties. Shut up in a sick room,
closing with her delicate fingers the curtains, while Albert was asleep,
weeping while he slept, and, smiling when he woke. At this cruel moment
hope is absent; sorrow extends still more and more her heavy icy hand over
this hitherto so happy pair. Albert, at Venice, became so ill that they
sent for his family. They come, they see him, he is dying, but he is
consumed with an irresistible desire to revisit his country. They set out
in a carriage at short journeys. They leave Venice the 10th of April, and
arrive in Paris on the 11th of May.
{20}
On the 26th Albert is established 13 Rue de Madame, in a hired room near
the Luxembourg. He is a little better and much happier, for he is in
France, surrounded by his friends. They are young, they are good, they are
happy--why then, death, sickness, and the crushing sorrow of approaching
separation? Why all this anguish at once--conversion refused to the prayers
of Albert--recovery refused to the tears of Alexandrine? O God! where art
thou? Thou art absent when they all wait for thee. Thou wert the witness of
their innocent love, the author of their union. Thou wert with them when
they were happy, and now they suffer, they cry, and thou dost not hear, and
yet they have had days of perfect happiness and a youth without clouds.
Thou didst create them. Thou hast forsaken them.

Thou permittest that they should be afflicted, and when they cry, thou wilt
not answer. Why didst thou say by thy prophet, "Before they call I will
answer. As they are yet speaking, I will hear." Thy promises but add to
their sufferings the pain of disappointed hope. O God! where art thou? With
their hearts wrung by the same sorrow, the disciples were walking on the
road to Emmaus, when meeting a stranger they confided to him their trouble.
"We hoped that it was he who would have redeemed Israel, and to-day is the
third day since these things were done." They did not know that God was
present, though hidden from them in the silence of the little chamber,
where these poor Jews, who represent too well our patience so soon
exhausted, and our unworthy dejection, were sadly assembled together.
Suddenly their hearts awoke and they recognized in the breaking of bread
this ever-present God who gives himself to us as the pledge of future
immortality. The miracle of the little cottage of Emmaus is enacted every
day, and was visible at the death-bed of Albert de La Ferronays. Already at
Venice, during the night of the 6th of March, Albert appeared oppressed in
his sleep, and Alexandrine, overwhelmed by the agony of the coming
separation, watched by his bed. "At half-past five," she writes, "the color
left his lips, he spoke with effort and desired me to send for his
confessor. 'Has it come to this? Has it come to this?' I cried; then I
added at the same moment, 'now I am a Catholic.' In pronouncing these
words, firmness, if not happiness, filled my heart." On the 14th of March
she wrote to her mother a truly sublime letter, which I will quote at
length. "From love and respect to you, my mother, I have not inquired into
the claims of the Catholic religion for fear that I should find it true,
and I should be forced to embrace it. But now I am possessed with an
irresistible desire to belong to the same faith as my Albert. At no price,
however, not even to soften the death-bed of my husband, would I act
disloyally toward God. Be assured, I shall not act without conviction. Dear
mother, allow me to be instructed, and when you meet again your poor
widowed daughter, ah! you will not repine at her being a Catholic. If the
Catholic Church had no other advantage over ours than that she prays for
the dead, I should prefer her." On his side Albert, with his dying hand,
traced in his journal these words, which were his last: "O Lord! I implored
thee by day and by night, Give her to me, grant me this joy if it only
lasts for one day. Thou heardest me, O God! why should I complain. My
happiness was complete, if it was short, and now thou hast granted the rest
of my prayers, and my dear one is about to enter the bosom of the church,
thus giving me the assurance that I shall see her again in that happy home
where we shall both be lost in the beatific vision of thy boundless love."
On the 27th of May, 1836, Madame de Ferronays knelt before an altar,
arranged in her husband's room, on which the Abbé Martin de Mourien
celebrated mass, and made her profession of the Catholic faith.
{21}
On the night of the 5th or 7th of June, she received her first communion at
the same mass where Albert received his last. I will describe this pathetic
scene in the words of Alexandrine herself. "Albert was in bed, be had not
been able to rise. I knelt beside him, I took his hand, it was thus that we
commenced the mass of Abbé Gerbert. As the mass advanced, Albert made me
let fall his hand, this dear hand that was to me so sacred that in the most
solemn hour of life I felt that I did not offend God in retaining it.
Albert drew it from me, exclaiming, 'Go, go, belong only to God.' The Abbé
Gerbert addressed a few words to me before giving me communion, then be
gave it to Albert, then again I took his beloved hand; we expected every
moment would be his last." No book could contain, no imagination could
depict a scene more tenderly, more profoundly pathetic. At this point we
read no more, we weep; it is to thee, O God! that the soul turns, to thee
that the soul ascends, to thee who truly and really wert present in his
chamber of suffering, walking so to speak on the waves of death, and
saying, "Fear not, I am with thee." O my Protestant brethren: it is to you
that this page seems to be dedicated; it is you who have formed the
character of this young girl; it is to you that she owes the habit of
living in the presence of God, to you she owes the loyalty, the perfect
sincerity of her intentions and the zeal with which she purifies her
conscience; at each moment guarding it as a stainless mirror which must
ever reflect the image of God. She followed _you_ on the road to
Emmaus, where Jesus explained to his disciples the sacred Scriptures; but
like the disciples she has thrown down the book, it could not satisfy her;
she has followed God to his holy table. By the bed of death, on the edge of
the yawning abyss of irreparable separation, hymns and words disappear like
useless sounds and barren discourses. Famished for hope and for
consolation, the soul has need of stronger food. She must tear down the
veil, and lay hold of God. O my Protestant brethren! read this history of a
Christian, who was yours until the moment when stretching out her
despairing hands toward nothingness, she came to us to be united in God
with her dying husband. Read the sad but striking description of the days
that follow the first communion. It is to you that I would dedicate the
story of this sublime agony, accompanied so tenderly by the church to the
last sigh of the passing soul.

On the 27th of June, after two years of married life, at twenty-two years
of age, Albert returned to God!

Is not this sad enough? Why should we continue after such scenes? What new
spectacle can move us? We have known the bride, the wife. We are going to
follow the widow; to follow her from the extremity of human sorrow, to
consolation, even to joy and love, reformed again in God. The only
difference between the widow of India burned in the ashes of her husband
and the Christian widow, is that the Christian is consumed more slowly. She
waits for death, instead of seeking it; from the first day of bereavement
an invisible fire, which nothing can extinguish, saps the spring of her
life.

The first moments are the most cruel, but they are not the hardest to
endure; when one can say yesterday, the day before yesterday, it is only
absence, it is not the abyss of an irreparable adieu.


    Alexandrine to Pauline.
      "Boury, July 10, 1836.

  "Pauline--Pauline! I could have written to you on the 29th of June, had I
  not been occupied with other things. I repeat, I could have done it. God
  has given me the power to do and to endure much far beyond all I ever
  believed possible, for have I not seen the eyes of Albert close in death?
  have I not felt his hand grow cold for ever? Eugenie will tell you that
  God has granted me that which I asked of him. He died resting in my arms,
  my hand in his.
{22}
  Alone, and very quietly, I closed his dear eyes, deprived of sight, and
  perhaps of feeling. I whispered close into his ear the name so beloved,
  Albert! I had nothing more tender to say to him than this word which
  expressed everything I felt. I wished that the last sound which should
  fall upon his ear should be my voice, growing fainter and fainter until
  it was lost in the distance and darkness of that gloomy passage, which
  leads at last into the light. Alas! my voice, like myself, was obliged to
  remain on the confines, obliged for the first time to be separated from
  him. O Pauline! I was strong then, unnaturally strong. I was still
  stronger for three days, then I commenced to grow weaker and weaker, and
  each morning I seemed feebler than the night before."

This estimable widow of twenty years, always ardent and always perfectly
natural, expresses a truth even in her first sensations. Little by little
sorrow intensifies, courage fails, despair commences. The sympathy of
friends, which had until then a little occupied, distracted, and deadened
the pain, without healing it, becomes colder and more distant, and the soul
is enveloped in the icy shades of silence and solitude.


    Alexandrine to Pauline.

  "To tell me at my age that all happiness is passed, that makes me
  shudder, and yet my only rest will be to feel entirely inconsolable, for
  I should loathe myself if I felt that I could again enjoy the amusements
  of life, or look upon the world otherwise than I do now. Albert was to me
  the light which colored everything. With him pearls, jewels, pretty
  rooms, beautiful scenery, appeared to me lovely. Now, nothing charms me.
  I have but one wish, to know where he is. To see if he is happy, if he
  loves me still; to share all things with him _now_ as I promised to
  do on earth before God."

Yes, the faithful widow sees nothing, she is ever with the absent; it is
not he who is dead, it is the world which has gone from her, which is
shrouded in darkness. But in the long weary hours, when she listens to the
plaintive murmurings of her own heart, the Christian widow hears another
voice of heavenly music, and angels whisper in her ear those gentle words,
"Blessed are those who weep, for they shall be comforted." "Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God." It is not only in heaven that pure
hearts see God, they see him everywhere on earth, in all objects, in all
creatures--in all events they recognize him, they contemplate him. An
unexpected brightness is introduced little by little into this desolate
life. The world is colored anew; obscured by sorrow, it is transfigured by
faith.

She who is afflicted is not consoled, she is accepted, supported; from this
day a miracle commences. She whose affections have been riven, seeks to
love again in making friends for him whom she has lost, in interesting for
him the saints whom she invokes, the poor whom she assists. Some days after
the death of Albert, Alexandrine sold a beautiful pearl collar, a relic of
happy days, and she wrote:

  "Pearls! symbol of tears!
   Pearls! tears of the sea,
   Gathered with tears in the depths of the ocean,
   Worn often with tears in the midst of the pleasures of the world;
   Resigned to-day with tears in the greatest of human sorrows,
   Go, dry tears, by changing into bread."

The love of the poor became for this young Christian a sublime
consolation--the love of Jesus Christ in the persons of the poor--the love
of the poor in the thought of Albert. To love the unhappy when we are
unhappy is an exquisite sign of perfection in our poor human nature, but a
sign happily very common. Is it not much more difficult when we suffer to
love the happy--not to be impatient of their pleasures, to lend ourselves
to them, and though our own hearts are for ever shut against joy, to be
able to rejoice with those who rejoice? Le Récit d'une Soeur shows us the
Christian widow in the midst of her family, among her young sisters and
brothers, smiling, amiable, communicating, no doubt, by her presence to the
pleasures of the house the tinge of melancholy which ever belongs to the
joys or earth.

{23}

The commencement of the second volume of Madame Craven's history is
occupied with the _tableau_ of the interior of her family, who were
united at the Chateau of Boury during the years 1836, '37, and '38, which
followed the death of M. Albert de la Ferronays. Obliged, by the diplomatic
career of her husband, to change frequently her residence--to go from
Naples to Lisbon, to London, to Carlsruhe, to Brussels--Madame Craven was
almost always separated from her parents and her sisters. To this
separation we owe the correspondence which serves today to interest and
console us.

The description of the interior of the Chateau de Boury, depicted in these
letters, resembles a conversation, where each speaks in his turn and with
his own peculiar accent. But I will pass over this family picture to return
to Madame Albert de la Ferronays, the principal character in my story.

In the month of October, 1837, they removed the body of Albert to Boury, in
order to bury it in a sepulchre, where they had arranged two places without
separation.

  "Yesterday, alone with Julia, by the aid or a little ladder, Alexandrine
  descended into the excavation in order to touch and to kiss, for the last
  time, the coffin in which is enclosed all that she loves. In doing this
  she was on her knees in her own tomb. On the stone she had engraved:
  'What God hath put together, let no man put asunder.'"

In 1838 she rejoined her mother in Germany, where she spent the second
anniversary of the 29th of June. From Ischl she wrote to her sister a
touching description of the death of a young priest, who died of
consumption eleven months after his ordination. From Germany Madame de la
Ferronays went to Lumigny, from thence to Boury; and when the family
resolved to pass the winter of 1839 in Italy, she returned with a sad
delight to this beautiful country, where she had been so happy. She wished
to revisit all the scenes of her past happiness--to see again the rocks,
the trees, the mountains, which had been witnesses of her felicity--not
without tears, but without complaining; with the sweet serenity of perfect
resignation. "It is here," she said, "that I have been so full of bliss
that this world and life appeared too beautiful." After the description of
the second journey to Italy, there follows the account of the successive
deaths of M. de la Ferronays and the young daughters, Olga and Eugenie. At
this time, always absolutely sincere, incapable in anything of being
carried away by feeling, Alexandrine thought of entering a convent; she
relinquished the idea, but resolved to live in poverty for the poor. From
this day she dreams no more, she writes no more, she acts. Her love
expresses itself in joyous accents, in words of heavenly sweetness,
accompanied by austere virtues. It is the miracle and the triumph of true
piety, What is this? demands a disdainful world. Who is this devotee,
draped in black, who ventures out in the most inclement season, laden with
bundles? Has she paralyzed her heart? Does she love no one? Is she a piece
of mechanism, passing from the dreary garret to the dark cellar in the poor
neighborhood which surrounds her? No; this widow is a great lady, bearing
one of the oldest names of France. She is going to visit the dying, to
supply them with clothes and food, to teach their ignorant children; and on
her return she takes her pen, and from this heart, which you believe cold
and frozen, flow forth these words: "O my dear sister! can I fill you with
joy and courage in writing? Would that it were in my power; you do not know
how I love you, but you will know in eternity, where we shall enjoy each
other's love fully and completely."

{24}

This devotee paid a visit to another devotee, an old Russian lady, of whom
she writes: "I have seen Madame Swetchine; this delightful, excellent woman
told me that we ought not to speak ill of life, for it is full of beauty;
and yet this woman, so tender and so pious, is overwhelmed with moral and
physical suffering. She said to me, 'I love what _is_, because it is
true; I am contented.' The longer I live the more I wish to have my heart
filled with love, and only with love." Of all Alexandrine's former
pleasures, the sole relaxations she permitted herself were music and
reading. Part of her time she spent in Paris in the hospitals, which she
entered with the joyous, animated air of a young girl who sets out for a
_fête_, or a warrior who returns from battle. She ended by hiring a
little room in the Rue de Sèvres in order to live more plainly. Her
sisters, in looking into her wardrobe, found that it contained nothing. She
had robbed herself to give to the poor. This noble woman had but one cause
--the cause of God. She became the generous servant, almost the soldier of
the church, interesting herself in the cause of freedom, contributing to
foreign missions, seconding the educational projects of her friend, M. de
Montalembert; and, from the quiet of her little chamber, giving forth her
money and her prayers for the service of God. Madame Craven, in a letter,
dated the 31st of July, thus writes: "The evening of my departure from
Boury we went into the cemetery to pray. Alexandrine knelt beside Albert's
tomb, on the spot which, twelve years before, had been prepared for
herself. I was on my knees, by Olga. The night was warm and beautiful. As
we strolled slowly home, I turned and admired the setting sun, which was
embellishing, with its many colored rays, this sad spot. 'I love the
setting sun,' I exclaimed. 'Since my sorrow,' replied Alexandrine, 'the
setting sun makes me sad. It is the precursor of night. I do not like the
night. I love the morning and the spring--they bring before me the reality
of life that never ends. Night represents to me darkness and sin; evening
the transitory nature of the world; but morning and spring give me promise
of the resurrection and renewal of all things.' As we continued our walk,
Alexandrine said: 'Rest assured that all that pleases us most upon earth is
but a shadow; that the reality is alone in heaven. What is there upon earth
so sweet as to love? And I ask you if it is not easy to conceive that the
love of the divine love ought to be the perfection of this sweetness?--and
is not this the love of Jesus Christ? I should never have been comforted if
I had not learnt that this love exists for God, and is everlasting.' I
replied, 'You are very happy so to love God.' She answered me--and her
words, her expression, her attitude will remain ever engraved on my
memory--'O Pauline! should I not love God? should I not be transported
with joy when I think of him? How can you imagine there is any merit in
this, even that of faith, when I think of the miracle that he has wrought
in my soul? I loved, and desired the joy of earth--it was given to me. I
lost it, and I was overwhelmed with despair. Yet, to-day my soul is so
transformed that all the happiness I have ever known pales and grows dim in
comparison with the felicity with which God has filled my soul.' Surprised
to hear her speak thus, I said: 'If you had offered to you a long life to
be spent with Albert, would you accept it?' She replied, without
hesitation. 'I would not take it.' This was our last conversation, and as I
saw her then I see her now, with a flower of jessamine in her hand, her
face lighted up with heavenly beauty; and so she will ever appear to me
until I meet her again where there will be no more parting.' Alexandrine
died some months after, on the 9th of February, 1848.

If the angels could die, they would die as she did. Her last words to
Albert's mother were: "Tell Pauline it is so sweet to die."

{25}

On the 14th of November of the same year, Madame de la Ferronays rejoined
her husband, her son, and her three daughters. On the tombs of Albert,
Alexandrine, Olga, and Eugenie, and of their father and mother, one single
epitaph is necessary. It comprehends their life; it is the epitome of their
faith; it is the conclusion, the explanation, the design of this book:
"Love is stronger than death."

------

      Original

      The Church And The Sinner.


    The Church

  Prithee, why continue eating,
    Child, the husks of swine?
  Thou thy soul art only cheating
    With this food of thine.


    The Sinner.

  Other food hath long been wasted,
    Mother, by my sin;
  All its empty joys are tasted,
    Sorrows now begin.


    The Church.

  Hadst thou not a loving Father,
    Child, and happy home?
  There with him have rested, rather
    Shouldst thou than to roam.


    The Sinner.

  Yes; but he his now degraded
    Son would never know;
  From his memory I have faded,
    Mother, long ago.


    The Church.

  Child, the Father ne'er forgetteth
    Whom he called his son,
  To him naught but pride now letteth
    Not thy feet to run.


    The Sinner.

  Worthy for his lowly servant
    Am I not, I know;
  Yet with love and sorrow fervent
    Will arise, and go!

------

{26}

    From The Dublin University Magazine.

    Modern Writers Of Spain.

The literary portion of English and French people take little interest
about what philosophers and romance writers are doing on the outer borders
of Europe. Scarcely does an editor of a literary journal direct his
subscribers' attention to the current literature of Russia, Norway, Spain,
or Portugal. The most universally-read Englishman would be puzzled if you
asked him who is the Dickens or the Braddon of Transylvania, or if anything
worth reading has lately appeared in the Portuguese province of Alentejo.
Thanks to the talents and the genial disposition of Frederica Bremer, and
the vigorous and original character of Emily Carlen's novels, and the
interest excited for Norse literature by William and Mary Howitt, we have
become familiarized with the popular literature of Sweden. Worsae and
Andersen have made us attend to literary sayings and doings among the
meadows and beech woods and _havns_ of the Danish Isles. The efforts
of Count Sollogub and one or two other enlightened Russians have failed to
dispel our apathy on the subject of native Russian literature, and at this
moment we can recollect among the contents of our own reviews and magazines
for five or six years back, only two notices of the productions of living
Spanish novelist or romancist. Either we (English and French) are too much
absorbed in our own literature, and consequently negligent of that of our
neighbors, or those neighbors are producing nothing worthy [of] notice, and
in either case our efforts will scarcely turn public attention into a new
channel. Our intention is merely to advert to some literary features in the
life of the Spain of the present day. We shall not find her altogether
neglectful of the claims of her children who are at the moment striving to
add to her literary renown.


  Cervantes Remembered Too Late.

There is something very saddening in those solemnities held in honor of
departed genius. We see much time taken from necessary business, much
eloquence wasted--often with a side glance toward self-glorification, and
much money thrown away, which, if once timely and prudently used, would
have relieved the anxieties and cheered the existence of the ill-favored
son of genius.

In the article on Cervantes which appeared in the University for August,
[Footnote 2] allusion was made to his imprisonment and harsh treatment in a
certain town of La Mancha. It is the same whose name, he says, in the
commencement of Don Quixote, he does not choose to remember. It has been
ascertained that this village of unenviable reputation is Argamasilla; and
the very house where he resided against his will, and dreamily arranged the
plan of his prose epic, has been identified. The Infanta Don Sebastian has
purchased it, with a view to its preservation, and a patriotic and spirited
printer, Don Manuel de Ribadeneira, has obtained permission to work off two
impressions there of the Life and Adventures of the ingenious Hidalgo, Don
Quixote. One is, in the Paris idiom, an edition of luxury, intended for the
libraries and _salons_ of the great, the other a carefully executed
but low-priced edition for the populace.

    [Footnote 2: See Catholic World for October, 1886.]

{27}

The English cannot be accused of having neglected their own Cervantes in
his need. He appears to have united to his comprehensive and mighty genius,
good business habits, consulted the tastes of his public while endeavoring
to improve them, watched the behavior of his door-keepers, and though
probably not a rigid self-denier, made his outlay fall far short of his
income, and enjoyed some years of life in respectable retirement. So his
countrymen feeling no remorse on his account, show their respect for his
memory by eating and drinking heartily on stated occasions, and boring each
other with stereotyped speeches. When suitable days for jubilees or
centenaries or tercentenaries arrive, they take more trouble on themselves.
They journey to a small town in Warwickshire, and celebrate the event in as
tiresome a fashion as if they were members of the "British Association for
bettering the Universe," under all the inconveniences of crowded rooms,
crowded vehicles going and coming, and dear hotels. They manage matters of
the kind in Spain with a difference.

Some years since a statue was erected to Cervantes in front of the Congress
building, and the historian, Antonio Cavanilles, took occasion to mention
the opinion of the ghost of the great Spaniard on the matter in a dialogue
held between them.

  "During my life they left me in poverty. Now they raise statues which are
  of no manner of use to me, and they never celebrate a mass for the repose
  of my soul--a thing of which I have much need."

Whether the Marquis of Molins, the same gentleman who superintended the
editions of Don Quixote at Argamasilla, took this appeal to heart or not,
it is certain that since the year 1862 a solemn high mass and office have
been celebrated for the above-mentioned purpose before the Royal Academy of
Madrid. M. Antoine de Latour, [Footnote 3] in his Études Littéraires sur
l'Espagne Moderne, has left an account of one of these solemnities, some
particulars of which are worth being presented.

    [Footnote 3: This gifted and agreeable writer was born at Sainte Yrieix
    (Haute Vienne) in 1818, and educated at the college of Dijon. He held
    professorships at the College Bourbon and the college Henri Quatre.
    Louis Philippe confided to him the education of the young Duc de
    Montpensier, and in 1848 he shared the exile of the house of Orleans.
    He made his literary _début_ in poetry, his other productions
    being an Essay on the History of France in the Nineteenth Century, an
    Account of the Duc de Montpensier's Journey to the East, and and essays
    on Luther, Racan, Vertot, Malherbe. &c. He has resided for a
    considerable time in Spain, and written four or five works Spanish
    subjects.]

In 1616 Cervantes was interred in the church of the Convent of the
Trinitarians, where his daughter had taken the veil. Some fifteen years
afterward the community removed to the site now occupied by them, and the
impression is strong that in the removal the remains of the poet were
brought to their own house, his daughter being alive, or but recently dead
at the time. In the chapel of their convent the annual solemnity takes
place on the 16th April. The convent stands in the street called after
Cervantes' contemporary and dramatic rival, Lope de Vega. We proceed with
M. de Latour's account of what he witnessed.

Our visitor found the chapel hung with black cloth trimmed with gold
fringe. In the centre was a catafalque on which rested the habit of St.
Francis borne by Cervantes during the last three years of his life, a
sword, prison-fetters, a crown of laurel, and a copy of the first edition
of Don Quixote. At each corner of the catafalque stood a disabled soldier,
and at each side, and extending the whole length of the chapel, ran two
lines of seats for the members of the various academies.

At the lower end of the chapel, on seats connecting the extremities of the
long rows mentioned, sat the Alcaid, the rector of the University, and the
curé of Alcala de Henares, Cervantes' birthplace, where the record of his
baptism was discovered some time since.

{28}

Among the remarkable personages met to celebrate the occasion, M. de Latour
noticed the Marquis de Molins, its institutor; M. Hartzembuch, a dramatic
poet, an idolizer of Cervantes, and the zealous superintendent of the two
Argamasilla editions of the Don; Ventum de la Vega, the Marquis de Santa
Cruz, whose ancestor fought at Lepanto, and Antonio Cavanilles, the eminent
historian before mentioned. Seated behind the academicians were the most
illustrious ladies of Spain, all appropriately attired in mourning dress.

The Archbishop of Seville celebrated high mass, the different parts of
which were accompanied with music as old as the days of Cervantes himself.
The distinguished composer, Don Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, had sought these
pieces out with much trouble, some of them having for a long time been only
heard in the Sistine chapel at Rome. We subjoin the openings of some of
these, with the authors and dates.

_Regem cui omnia vivunt_ (the king by whom all things live) was
composed by Don Melchior Robledo, chapel master in Saragossa in 1569, the
same year when Cervantes' little collection of elegiac poems on Queen
Isabel appeared.

_Domine in furore tuo_ (Lord (rebuke) me not in thy fury) was the
composition of Don Andres Lorente, organist in Alcala de Henares,
Cervantes' birthplace. He himself probably heard it sung there in his
youth.

_Versa est in luctum cithara mea_ (my harp has changed to sorrow) was
composed for the funeral of Philip II. by Don Alfonso Lobo.

_Libera me_ (deliver me), the composition of Don Matias Romero, Chapel
Master to Philip III., dates from about the death of Cervantes.

Don Francisco de Paula Benavides, the young bishop of Siguenza, preached
the sermon. Taking his text from St. Paul, "Being dead he still speaketh
through faith," he proceeded with the panegyric of the great-souled poet
and soldier, and of all the illustrious dead who have honourcd Spain by
their writings. He did not neglect to interest the nuns, who were listening
with all their might behind their lattices. Their order had been
instrumental in restoring the brave Saavedra to his country, and to their
exertions Spain and the world were in part indebted for the Don Quixote and
the Exemplary Novels. They possessed the remains of the poet in their
house, and thus bound to his memory they must not omit the care of his
salvation to their prayers. The delivery of the discourse, according to M.
Latour, was marked with a noble simplicity, and a manner combining
sweetness with vigour.

Next morning he returned to the convent, hoping to be gratified with the
sight of Cervantes' tomb. Alas! he learned that when the remains were
transferred from the old house, sufficient attention was not paid to keep
them apart from those of others who were removed along with them. So,
though it is morally certain that the present convent of the Trinitarians
guards all that remains of the body, once so full of life and active
energy, they are now undistinguishable from the relics of the nameless
individuals who had received interment in the same building.


    The Modern Novel:
    Donna Caecelia De Faber.

We are not to imagine Spain insensible to the merits of her living gifted
sons and daughters, and ever employed in shedding tears over the tombs of
her Cervantes, her Lope de Vega, or her Mendoza. No. She possesses living
writers whose names are not only known from Andaluçia to Biscay, but are
even spoken of in Paris _salons_. The most distinguished among these
is the lady who chooses to style herself _Fernan Caballero_, her real
name being Caecilia de Faber, her birthplace Alorges in Switzerland, and
her father, M. Bohl de Faber, a Hamburgh merchant, and consul for that city
at Cadiz.

{29}

She has been married more than once, and thus enabled to combine experience
with natural ability in her pictures of life and manners. Through the favor
of the queen she holds apartments in the Alcazar of Seville, and the
splendid old Moorish city could not possess a writer better qualified to
paint the manners of the little-doing, much-enjoying people of that
southern paradise, Andalulçia, and the delights of the happy climate, where
life is not only supportable, but enjoyable at very small expense.

Besides happily seizing and vividly sketching what takes place among the
aristocracy of Seville in their Patios [Footnote 4] and Tertulias (reunions
in their _salons_), this authoress has made herself thoroughly
acquainted with the circumstances and characters and peculiar customs of
the country laborers and shepherds. Melodramatic situations abound in some
of them, and perhaps these are more relished by her Spanish readers than
others whose chief merit consists in truthful and picturesque tableaux of
the order of things among which they are placed, and which consequently
possesses no novelty for them. We can readily conceive how French and
English students of her novels and romances would prefer this latter class
for their entertainment. Who would not rather listen to a couple of
Andaluçian peasants discussing the clime and people of Britain than to some
terrible, exciting though undignified, domestic tragedy? (_A_. is
dissuading _B_. from making the voyage to Britain.)

  "_A_. The earth is there covered with so deep a crust of snow that
  people are buried in it.

  "_B_. Most Blessed Mary! But they are quiet folk, and do not carry
  stilettoes.

  "_A_. They have no olives, no gaspacho, [footnote 5]   and must put
  up with black bread, potatoes, and milk.

  "_B_. Much good may it do them.

    [Footnote  4: The Patios are the interior flagged courts surrounded by
    colonnades from the roof of which lamps are suspended. In the centre of
    the court is a fountain surrounded by shrubs in fruit or flower. Seated
    on sofas in the corridor, or on carpets near the fountain, the princely
    owners enjoy an elysium during hot weather.]

    [Footnote 5: Soup made up of olive oil, vinegar, spices, etc.]

  "_A_. The worst is, there are neither monks nor nuns there; the
  churches are few, and the walls of them as bare as if they were
  hospitals; no private chapels, no altars, no crucifixion.

  "_B_. Oh, my sun, my white bread, my church, my Maria Santissima, my
  delightful land, my Dios Sacramentado! How could I think to change you
  for that land of snow, of black bread, of bare-walled churches, of
  heretics? Horrible!"

Fernan Caballero enters with warm-hearted sympathy into the pleasures and
troubles of her country people. Few could read without interest her sketch
of the peasants returning at evening from their work. We fancy Sancho Panza
and a neighbor coming home to meet the greeting of Tereza and his children,
himself mounted on _Dapple_, while the little foal frolics about,
unconscious of its own future life of labor. Sancho carries a basket of
fruit and vegetables covered with the sappy maize stalks, which will
furnish a delightful supper to the patient _burra_. Sancho's neighbor
is riding beside him, and you will hear in a quarter of an hour of their
conversation more proverbs than John Smith and Tom Brown would quote in
seven years. The burras quicken their pace as they approach the village,
for the children of both men are running to meet them, while their wives
are looking out for them from the porches of their doors. Sancho dismounts
and sets his younger child on Dapple, while his elder frolics about her and
makes free with her ears. Sancho's neighbor gets his youngest into his lap,
while one of the elder boys takes the halter and the other gambols about
with the trusty house dog, asses and dog being much better treated than if
their lot lay in Berkshire or Donegal.

With their innumerable rhymed proverbs, their chatty propensities, their
happy clime, fine country, facility of procuring a livelihood, few wants,
and lively and happy temperaments, the Andaluçian peasants afford suitable
subjects to Fernan Caballero's pencil.
{30}
They see in the many natural advantages they possess, the goodness of God
and the favors of the saints; and their pious legends, in connection with
every object round them, are innumerable. "Toads and serpents are useful in
absorbing the poisonous exhalations of the earth; the serpent attempted to
bite the Holy Infant on the journey into Egypt, so Saint Joseph appointed
him to creep on his belly thenceforth. Some trees have the privilege of
permanent foliage because they sheltered the HOLY FAMILY on the same
journey. The Blessed Virgin hung the clothes of the Infant Jesus on a
rosemary bush to dry, so its sweetest perfume and brightest blossoms are
reserved for Friday. The swallow plucked some of the thorns out of the
Saviour's crown, therefore he is a favorite bird with all Christians, while
the owl is obliged to keep his eyes shut and whimper out, '_cruz,
cruz,_' because he irreverently stared at our suffering Lord on the
cross. The hedgehog should be well treated, because he presented to the
Blessed Virgin some sweet apples on the tips of his prickles, while the
earwig is deservedly hated for boring his way into, and effectually
spoiling the nicest of them." Most of these poetically develop fancies are
or were familiar with the Roman Catholic peasantry of Ireland, and probably
amongst the populace of moat continental countries.

Perhaps the most powerful of our authoress's stories is La Gaviota (the
sea-gull), giving the career of a selfish, ill-disposed country girl,
gifted with some beauty and a fine voice. She obtains a gentle German
doctor for husband, is patronized by a duke, trained for the office of a
prima donna, becomes fascinated by a bull fighter, proves false to her
estimable husband, and ends badly of course. Devout and moral as the
authoress undoubtedly is, she does not avoid strong and exciting situations
no more than Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe or Mrs. Oliphant. Such is the scene
where the betrayed husband sees her seated beside the bullfighter among his
unedifying associates, and that other of the death of her paramour by a
furious animal in the arena before her eyes, and these are matched by
passages in the Alvareda Family.[Footnote 6] This story, which is entirely
occupied with country folk, and incidents of the war in Buonaparte's time,
and scenes of brigandage, is next to La Gaviota in power. The match-making
scene between the garrulous and saving Pedro and his relative that is to
be, the _Tia_ Maria, fully as provident as himself, might have
happened in a country farmhouse in Wexford or Carlow, and would have been
described by Banim or Griffin or Carleton, nearly in the same terms.

    [Footnote 6: A translation of this story was given in The Catholic
    World of last year, as Perico the Sad; or, The Alvareda Family.]

The Andalusians are as partial to bantering each other as the natives of
Kilcullen or Bantry, but all is taken in good humor.

In reading the country business in this and others of our authoress's tales
we have been forcibly reminded of corresponding pictures so truthfully
painted in Adam Bede. We could scarcely fancy such a piece of extravagance
as the following to be uttered by a Spanish lady, till assured of the fact
by Fernan Caballero. _Casta_ wishes to induce her elderly lover, Don
Judas Taddeo Barbo, to cease his persecutions. He does not read, and
entertains feelings of repugnance to literary ladies in general; so she
takes him into her confidence.

  "'Yes, yes I am a poet, but do not mention it, I beg. Some of my works
  are printed, but I have put the names of my friends to them. Martinez de
  la Rosa's poems are mine, not his. I have also tried my hand on
  theatrical pieces. The Consolations of a Prisoner, attributed to the Duke
  de Rivas, is my composition.'

  "'Who would have suspected a lady, so young, so beautiful, so womanly, so
  attractive? Why, a writing woman ought to be old, ugly, and slovenly--a
  man-woman!'

  "'All prejudices, Don Judas. Have you read my Tell?'

  "'Miguel Tell, the Treasurer? No. I never read; it injures my sight.'

{31}

  "'Well I must read an extract from my great historical work on William
  Tell, not Miguel the Treasurer.' (Here poor Don Judas began to meditate
  an escape, the very thing the lady wished.)

  "'William Tell, my hero, was a native of Scotland who refused to bow down
  to the beaver hat of the English General, _Malbrun_, set up on a
  high pole. Out of this circumstance arose the thirty years' war, at the
  end of which Tell was proclaimed King of England under the title of
  William the Conqueror. He brought disgrace on his royal name by causing
  his wife, the beautiful Anne Boleyn, to be beheaded. Struck with remorse
  he sent his son Richard Lion-heart on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On
  his return he was imprisoned for his great admiration of Luther, Calvin,
  Voltaire, and Rousseau, members of the Revolutionary Directory which put
  the pious King Louis XIV. to death. About that time Don Pedro the Cruel
  established the inquisition in Spain to prevent such proceedings in his
  kingdom, and thus he obtained his surname'"

Poor Don Judas was terrified by the erudition of the cunning lady, who thus
got rid of him.

The collected works of this lady have been printed at the expense of the
queen. It is only seventeen or eighteen years since she began to write,
and, if we can trust the accuracy of foreign biographers, she is now in her
seventieth year. Two volumes of selections from her works entitled The
Castle and Cottage in Spain, have appeared in an English dress.


    Rustic Tales: Don Antonio De Trueba.

The writer next to be noticed, by birth a Biscayan peasant, is now or was
lately a sub-editor of a newspaper. Don Antonio de Trueba y la Quintana was
born 24th December, 1821. In the preface to one of his works he presents
this picture of his birthplace and his early life.

  "On the slope of one of the mountains of Biscay stand four white houses
  nearly hidden in a wood of walnut and chestnut trees, and which cannot be
  seen at any distance till winter has deprived the trees of their foliage.
  There I passed the first fifteen years of my life.

  "In the valley is a church whose spire pierces the surrounding canopy of
  foliage, and is seen above the chestnut and ash trees. In this church
  they celebrate two masses, one at the rising of the sun, the other two
  hours afterward.

  "We, the young boys of the hamlet rose every Sunday with the song of the
  birds, and went down to the early mass, singing and jumping over the
  bushes. The elders of the families attended the later devotions. While
  the fathers and grandfathers were so occupied, I took my seat under a
  cherry tree opposite the door, and had a full view of the entire vale
  till it approached the shore. I was soon joined by four or five young
  girls with cheeks as blooming as the cherries which hung over our beads,
  or the red ribbons which bound the long braids of their hair. They would
  request me to make some verses for them to sing in the evening to the
  accompaniment of the basque tambourine, when the young would be dancing,
  and the aged looking on in sympathy with their enjoyment."

Don Antonio was already a poet, though his material sources of information
and inspiration were very easily counted. His library consisted of the
Fueros (Customs) of Biscay, Samanego's Fables, Don Quixote, a book of
ballads, and two or three volumes of the Lives of the Saints. At fifteen
years of age (1836), the Carlist cause gathering the youth of Biscay to its
side, Antonio's parents not being enthusiastic partisans of that party,
sent their son to a distant relative in Madrid, who could do nothing better
for the future poet and novelist than employ him in his hardware shop to
take down door-hinges, pokers, and frying-pans for his customers.

For ten tedious years did our poet in embryo do the duty of a shopman by
day, treat himself the to a book when be could, and spend in study great
part of the time that should be given to sleep. Bad business or failure
obliged him at the end of the time mentioned to look out for other
occupation, and since that time he has been connected with journalism, the
evenings still being devoted to poetry and romance.

The ordinary vehicle in which the nameless poets of Spain utter their
thoughts to the people is the quatrain, in which the second and fourth
lines rhyme after a fashion, the accented vowels corresponding without
exception, the consonants when it pleases Apollo. This is what they call
the _Romance_, and in which Trueba has endeavored to improve the taste
of the people by a genuine poetic feeling, and perfection in the structure
of the verse.

{32}

But our Biscayan thought a poet's life incomplete without the sympathy
which only a loving and intelligent wife can afford. So he incurred the
expense of a household, as well as gave support to his aged parents. Along
with laboring at the public press and writing and publishing Los Cantares,
he found time to compose his Rose-colored Tales, all concerned with the
ordinary life of the country in which his boyhood was passed, and all seen
through that softly colored magic medium through which mature age loves to
look back to the period of careless hopeful youth. These stories are called
The Resurrection of the Soul, The Stepmother, From our Country to Heaven.
The Judas of the House, and Juan Palamo. All end happily, all are imbued
with the purest morality, and breathe an atmosphere in which live the best
feelings of our nature.

While writing the dedication of them to his wife, he was enlivened by the
anticipation of a visit they would shortly make to his natal village.

  "While I write this, the most cherished wish of my life is about to be
  gratified. Before the July sun withers up the flowers, the breezes and
  the flowers of my native hills shall cool our foreheads, and perfume our
  hair. The venerable man who honors himself and thee in calling thee his
  daughter, is now going from house to house in the village, and telling
  the companions of my boyhood, while tears of joy find their way down his
  check, 'My children are coming; my son is about revisiting his native
  valleys as lovingly as he bade them adieu twenty years ago.'

  "And our father and our brothers are thinking on us every moment, and
  doing all in their humble means to beautify and cheer the apartments
  destined for us. Every time they come to the windows, they expect to see
  my form on the hillock where they caught the last site of me seventeen
  years ago."

Alas! what disappointments wait on such pleasant anticipations! Paying a
tardy visit to the scenes so lovingly and pleasurably remembered, the
careworn elderly man finds dear old houses levelled; new, raw ones reared
on their site; old paths and ways deserted, and new roads laid down; new
and uninteresting topics filling up conversation, the once fresh and fair
romantic boys and girls now common-place husbands and wives, except such as
have been removed by death or change of residence. His former comrades,
youths and maids once buoyant with bright hopes, are now gray-haired and
wrinkled, or distressed, or departed, and of the revered and loved old
people of long ago not one has been left to bid him welcome. There are now
no ties to detain him in his long regretted native place; he hastens back
to his ordinary colorless occupation and cares, rendered agreeable or
tolerable by habit, and wishes he had not gone on that sorrowful journey.

In the greater part of these tales figures the Indian, that is, one who has
spent some time in Mexico or the West Indies, and returns to cheer or
disturb the former companions of his early life. The narratives are made up
of simple village annals, loves and jealousies, injustices and their
punishments, generous deeds and their recompenses, constancy sharply tried
and victorious, unions at the threshing floors, Sunday morning devotions,
Sunday evening recreations, troubles of good housewives with their
play-loving little boys, and all the worries and comforts and joys and
griefs that attend on the lives of those whose lot is to cultivate the
earth, the curé always filling the office of the good fairy in household
tales.


    Satire: Don Jose Gonzalez De Tejada.

Don José Gonzalez de Tejada may be taken as the representative man of the
living Spanish satirists. Few looking on the steady, easy-going, fat, and
florid young man with good-nature playing about the corners of his mouth,
would suspect the keen spirit of satire which inspires his verses.
{33}
Making use of the romance form before explained, he celebrated in the
public papers the late triumphs of his country over the Moors, and these
verses were in every one's mouth. In his satires he never condescends to
personalities. He lashes selfishness, rage for wealth, worldliness, lack of
patriotism, etc. He calls his collection "Anacreontic Poems of the latest
Fashion," but they have nothing of the genuine Anacreontics but the form.
The classic student, or even the reader of Moore's translation, recollects
the bibulous old poet's direction to the painter about his mistress's
portrait. Here is the Spanish equivalent:

  "Figure to me, O photographer of my soul!
  the beauty who holds me in thrall.

  "As to countenance, let her be dark or fair,
  to me it's all the same.

  "But let sparkling diamonds give lustre to her tresses,
  and two golden lamps hang from her ears.

  "Let her neck be dark, or possess the whiteness of alabaster,
  but for decency's sake cover it with pearls or sapphires.

  "Let her graceful form be shrouded with rich valuable stuffs.
  A rich binding always enhances the value of books.

  "While she rolls along in her _calèche_ my
  attention is occupied with her rich liveries
  and the cost of the equipage.

  "Happy he who, prancing along by the carriage,
  or seated by her side, cigar in mouth,
  can exclaim, 'All that surrounds me is mine!'

  "Paint her for me in ball costume, at the mass,
  or the _retiro_, ever richly dressed,
  ever surrounded by opulent charms.

  "But alas! her greatest charms you cannot
  see to portray--her father's crowns!
  On these is my heart fixed."

Don José is somewhat old fashioned in his notions. He does not attribute
all the qualities of and overruling Providence to the mere progress of
science and the additions to our corporal conveniences. Here is his vision
of the origin of printing:

  "Turning the earth into a sponge with his tears,
  man presented himself all dreeping at the throne of Jupiter.

  "And cried, 'Good evening, O powerful god,
  maker of stars, of worlds, and of domestic fowl!

  "Thou createdst us one day from nothing
  mixed with a little mud; thou hast bestowed
  on us genius enveloped in a soft covering of flesh.

  "'The world is a cage, and each of us a
  parrot climbing and balancing himself over
  his neighbor's head.

. . . . .

  "'Thou hast bestowed us ears which to
  the deaf are a mere ornament, and a tongue,
  best gift of all.

  "'Placed between the teeth she gives
  them to understand that unless she lies, they
  can have nothing to chew.

  "'But alas! in our time she is incapable to
  express all that the fruitful brain conceives
  and brings forth.

  "'Lengthen it then the third of a perch, or
  give it for aid an additional organ.

  "'Juppy made a grimace, and the affrighted
  hills sunk, and the poles trembled.

  "'Well,' said the deity, always prodigal of gifts,
  'I shall convert into tongues sundry vile things of this lower world.

  "'Of old shirts, of disgusting rags, I shall
  make gay clothes for the press,
  flesh and blood for the daily paper.

  "'In the feathered garb of the goose are
  cannons sufficient to win treasures.

  "'Let your arms cease to brandish the war-like steel,
  and turn inert and fat bodies of men into sieves.

  "'Iron fashioned into slender tongues
  which sing along the paper, shall there engrave
  the conceptions of genius.

  "'And in order that you may attain the steepest summits,
  I shall furnish your heads with pride and envy in abundance.

  "'Advance, throw shame behind, flatter the proud,
  copy, deride, calumniate, and be
  sure to burn incense in your own honor.

  "'I have spoken.' And he added, rubbing his chin,
  'Henceforth you are a man; hitherto you were but an ape.'"


    History: Don Antonio Cavanilles.

Don Antonio Cavanilles, an advocate and member or the Academy, has
distinguished himself by his yet unfinished history of Spain, an
interesting narrative, evincing the most patient research, and attractive
from the adjuncts of customs and phases of the different eras, and personal
traits of the historical personages. Don Modesto Lafuente is engaged on
another history of the same country. Don Antonio belongs to the school of
Livy and Herodotus, Don Modesto writes in the spirit and with the pen of a
Manchester radical.

{34}

    The Drama: Don Adelardo Lopez De Ayala.

Zealous as the first historian for the preservation of the heroic and
unselfish character of the genuine Hidalgo, Don Adelardo Lopez de Ayala
writes his drama of "So Much per Cent," in which he excites unmeasured
contempt for the greed of gold, and the rage of speculation, whose visit to
the old soil of chivalry the author deprecates with all his might.

Don Gaspar Bono Serrano, a brave and devout military chaplain, once
attending the wounded in Don Carlos's camp, and an Arragonese by birth, has
given the lie to the public impression that no poet is born outside of
Castile and Andalulçia.

While it must be owned with regret that pestilent French novels have found
their way in abundance across the Pyrenees, the native literature of Spain,
with scarce an exception, maintains its ancient _prestige_ for
Christian morality. Long may the word continue to be said!

Want of space prevents any notice of the _feuilleton_ and the drama of
Spain at the present day, and other literary topics interesting the Spanish
capital. An instance of the interest taken in sound fictional literature in
high quarters is furnished by the publication of the complete collected
novels of Fernan Caballero, and of Antonio Trueba at the expense of the
Queen. Meanwhile Fernan, or rather Doña Caecilia, (_née_) de Faber,
dwells in the Royal Alcazar of Seville in apartments granted by her queen,
employs herself writing an educational work for the junior portion of the
royal family, and enjoys an extensive view from her windows over the old
Moorish buildings, the Guadalquiver, and the charming Andaluçian landscape
through which it winds.

------

    Original.

    The Godfrey Family; or, Questions Of The Day

  Chapter XXVIII.

With a woman's tact, Adelaide set to work to provide some powerful
attraction for her father; and luckily the proposed formation of a
scientific society brought many men of his own way of thinking to town just
then: and among them Mr. Spence, and a lord or two of "promotion of
knowledge" celebrity. Having managed thoroughly to interest her father in
this society, Adelaide told him that sea-air would benefit Hester's health,
that she intended to go with her for a few weeks to try it, that meantime
Mr. Spence would keep him company in the house, which Lucy Fairfield would
take charge of. To this Mr. Godfrey, though somewhat taken by surprise,
assented: he had already, at Adelaide's request, invited Mr. Spence to
spend a few weeks with him; but that gentleman was not exactly well pleased
to find on his arrival that the ladies were already preparing for
departure. He had intended to win a bride during his visit, thinking that
even if Hester proved obdurate, he might have a chance with the fair young
widow. But the carriage was already at the door. "I shall send the carriage
back, father, in a day or two;" said Adelaide. "I do not care to have my
horses at a livery stable; Hester and I are going to rusticate, ride
donkeys, climb hills, and throw pebbles into the sea: we take only Norah
with us, and you will have to see that the carriage horses are duly
exercised every day." She waved her hand in adieu, giving no time for
reply. The gentlemen could only bow their assent. Mr. Godfrey was too well
acquainted with Adelaide's imperious temperament to think of disputing her
commands; he had long learned to respect even her eccentricities. Was she
not a duchess?

{35}

The journey went on well enough the first day, but on the second, Adelaide
surprised her retinue by sending them back with the carriage, telling them
she would proceed onward with a hired vehicle. The coachman and footman
looked as if they would like to remonstrate, but it had been proved to be
somewhat dangerous to argue with this very positive lady, accustomed to
obey no will except her own. They submitted in silence, therefore, though
much against their inclination. "Now," said Adelaide, when they had
departed, "we can enjoy the luxury of being ourselves, unencumbered by
state and trappings. Hester, do you think you can teach Norah to call me
plain 'ma'am,' for a little while, till we return home? I am again Adelaide
Godfrey, that name will tell nothing and will enable us to act as we like,
observed by any."

It was not found difficult to initiate Norah into the idea that the great
duchess wanted to lay aside her dignity for a while, for the truth was
Norah's difficulty had ever been to get herself to say "your grace," on
requisite occasions. These preliminaries settled, the ladies proceeded on
their journey, took ready furnished lodgings in H----, and prepared to lead
the quiet life of the middle classes of society when out on a "bathing for
health" excursion.

The location of the Catholic chapel was soon examined, the priest's house
communicating with it. In neat straw bonnets trimmed with white, and plain
muslin dresses, Adelaide and Hester assisted at the daily mass. In the
priest they recognized at once the Abbé Martigni, and in the noble-featured
youth who knelt by his side Adelaide traced the likeness, now first
becoming dear to her, of her late husband. A day or two elapsed ere she
could summon courage to call at the house. At length the moment arrived for
the looked-for visit; the sisters had, however, scarcely gained entrance to
the outer court, when their attention was attracted by loud sobs from a
little boy and girl, who stood weeping as if their hearts would break. The
abbé was speaking to the woman with whom they came; he then turned to the
children, and patting them on the heads, said tenderly: "I will come
directly, my poor children." He turned hastily away without receiving his
visitors. Adelaide took the boy's hand kindly. "What is the matter?" she
asked. The boy could not speak for weeping, but the woman answered: "His
mother, my lady, poor Biddy, shure, she has fallen from her seat, on to the
stone pavement, while she was cleaning the windows of a large house in
Queen street, and they say she must die."

Adelaide whispered, "take me to your mother;" the boy looked at the woman;
"aye," said she, "do you and Sissy go home with the ladies, I will wait to
show his reverence the way." Led by Adelaide and Hester, the girl and boy
threaded back the way to their wretched home, and entered it some time
before the priest arrived. In one of those dreary places of large cities
called a "blind alley"--where the houses nearly meet in the upper stories,
and where the sunshine of heaven is excluded; surrounded by bad smells, and
the very atmosphere of which makes us shrink and shudder as we enter the
damp and dirty houses, the inhabitants of which are for the most part very
dirty also--here in a cellar, darker even than its neighbors, lay a poor
widow with four children weeping around her. The woman was barely sensible;
her brain and spine were injured; the doctor had said she could not live
till night; two women, neighbors, were with her trying "to get sense out of
her," as they said. It was the first time the sisters had ever witnessed
such a scene. The very walls were covered with dirt; the floor was partly
brick, and where these were broken away, the foot slipped into holes of the
bare earth; the windows were so covered with dust and cobwebs it was
difficult to find out what they were made of.
{36}
On a low pallet, on a dirty straw-bed, with no blankets, no sheets, naught
save one dirty coverlet, lay a figure with long, dark, lank hair, almost
covering her face and person. Adelaide approached, but the woman heeded her
not; her large dark eyes were set: she moaned from time to time, but spoke
not. "Where do you feel pain?" kindly inquired the lady. "Oh I bless you,
my lady, she cannot spake," said one of the women. "The Lord be praised,
here comes his reverence," said the other. "May the sweet Jesus lend her
her senses a few minutes, to let her spake to the priest!" The abbé
entered; he looked very grave; he sat down on the bed (there was no other
seat in the room) to examine the pulse and breathing of the patient. He
spoke to her. She answered not. "Try to rouse her," he said to the women.
They called to her: "Biddy, dear, shure here's his reverence. Biddy, won't
you spake to the priest?" She continued unconscious. "Have you a
smelling-bottle?" he said to Adelaide. "We must bring her to consciousness,
I wish I had some _eau-de Cologne_." "I will fetch you some," laid
Adelaide.

The sisters went out and purchased the _eau-de-Cologne_, also bread
and refreshments for the children; and then in that damp, unwholesome den,
the duchess watched long hours by the side of the unfortunate woman. She
was unattended too, for Hester had grown faint, and Adelaide had insisted
on her going home, and the abbé had left for a while. At length
consciousness returned, and the poor mother opened her eyes again. The
priest was immediately sent for, as he had desired to be, and the first
words she whispered betrayed a consciousness of his presence, for they
were: "Bring me my God! O my sweet Jesus, come!" The room was cleared for a
few moments. Biddy had been a faithful member of the church--she was a
monthly communicant, and the last sacraments brought unspeakable
consolation to her. She had remained silent and in prayer for some time. A
change came over her, and she motioned the father to come near to her. "I
am dying, father, and but for one thought it were sweet to die. My
children--oh! my children! I have struggled--father, you know I have
struggled to keep them in the true faith, to make them love Jesus and Mary;
and _now_, must they go to the scoffers? must they hear their faith
laughed at? O my God! O my Jesus! have pity on my children! Mary, my
mother, send a mother to my children. Let me come to thee in love and not
in fear. O mother of God, pity my children!" Agony caused the drops to
stand on the poor woman's brow; tears streamed down her cheeks; her hands
were clasped convulsively together; it was as though the soul were anxious
to depart, but delayed in order to plead with heaven in favor of the dear
little ones it left behind. There was a solemn pause within that dreary
chamber. The dim candle seemed to take a bright unearthly light. The
spirits of all were hushed in awe. Surely angels were hovering near,
whispering to the mother that her prayer was heard, for a smile broke over
the features, the hands unclenched themselves, peace overshadowed the room;
and then, as if moved by a power she could not withstand, Adelaide came
forward and knelt down in solemnity by the dying woman's side. Taking
within her own that now almost lifeless hand, she said: "I promise you, my
sister, before God and this holy priest, that I will take care of your
children while I live, and that they shall be carefully brought up in the
holy Catholic Faith." The woman's eyes were no longer sensible to sight,
but her spirit beard the promise. "I thank thee, O my God!" she uttered.
Shortly after a ray of indescribable rapture lighted up her features,
"Jesus, Mary, I come!" she said; and the soul had flown to its home in the
bright, bright realms of everlasting bliss.

· · · · ·

{37}

"This must be a pauper's funeral," said Adelaide, as she rose from her
knees. "Father, I am a stranger here; will you appoint some one to see to
it?" She placed her purse in his hand as she spoke. The father looked at
her. "Surely I have seen you before," he said; "your face is familiar to
me, but I cannot remember where we met." Adelaide blushed. "I will see you
after the funeral," she said; "meanwhile, may I ask you to point out some
woman to go home with me, and take charge of these children? I will pay her
well for her trouble." The abbé sent for a woman; a coach was called, and
Adelaide took the poor children to her lodgings. Here they were fed,
washed, clothed in neat mourning, and made ready to do the last sad honors
to their mother's remains.

A large concourse of Irish neighbors attended the funeral, though of course
all eyes were attracted to the stranger ladies, who walked up the aisle
with a child at each side of them. The priest was evidently moved as he
turned to address the assembly; and ever and anon his eye would glance to
Adelaide, as if trying in vain to make out who she was. His discourse was
on the history of poor Bridget, who lay before them. It ran something after
this fashion: "My friends, as we pass through life, and the actions and
thoughts of _real_ human beings come under our notice, one reflection
seems to strike us more forcibly than all the rest; it is this: that the
_real_ heroism of the earth is often overlooked, not only by the world
at large, but also by the actors themselves. The greatest acts of virtue
are performed by those who are unconscious of their greatness--the
greatest works done in this miserable world are done by those who never
dream that they are heroines at all. A lady is thought wondrously
condescending if, from charity, she sit for a few hours in an atmosphere
which the poor one she is tending endures always. She is deemed charitable
if, from her abundance, she bestows alms on the naked and starting. Now,
all this is _well_, very well; I would encourage such efforts to the
utmost; they bring a blessing both to the giver and receiver: but for
heroism, it is oftenest with the sufferer. I will relate to you a history
with which I have only been made acquainted within these few hours. I had
it from the lips of a friend who arrived from Ireland two days ago, in
search of her who now lies before us. Bridget Norton was the daughter of an
Irish farmer, who was somewhat better off than the majority; the farm-house
was well kept; the dairy was a picture of neatness. Everything around the
place was so fixed that they added to the completeness of the landscape.
Bridget was a fine handsome girl, sought after by many, and unfortunately
among her suitors was one base enough to vow revenge for the preference she
gave to the man she married. Bad times came; the rejected suitor became
agent for the landlord, and he perpetually harassed Norton for cash on
every possible pretense; while he made base proposals to the wife, which
were rejected with the scorn they deserved, and the rage of the deceiver
increased. The landlord was unluckily a proselytizer. He conferred great
gifts to all who would go to the English church, but was relentless against
all who held out. Young Norton took sick; when he was at the worst, the
agent found a flaw in his lease, and served an ejectment on the family at
the very time that the husband was unable to leave his bed. Then his cattle
died, some said by poison, and his crops failed. The man sank under these
reverses, and died. The landlord made many offers to Bridget of assistance
if she would send her children to his school and to church, and the agent
contrived many species of persecution to get her into his power. Bridget
fled to Liverpool, and by sheer hard work contrived to maintain her family
decently for some time; but her persecutor traced her, followed her,
blackened her character, so that she lost her employment.
{38}
Again she fled, but sickness overtook her ere she had made herself known;
she lost one of her children by sickness also, and, lastly, was compelled
to sell her little furniture to buy bread; last week she moved to the
cellar where she died. You know in what state she was found there. Yet
throughout these trials her confidence in God never has faltered; she has
for the last five years suffered hardship, penury, want, and persecution.
Amid all she has kept faithful to God, forgiven her enemy, and taught her
children the catechism. They have often wanted food, but never missed their
prayers; they have often been clothed in rags, but never neglected a mass
of obligation. This, for one brought up as Bridget had been to love
neatness and take pride in appearing respectable, argues no small victory
over human respect. But the love of God was deeply rooted in her heart; she
knew that exercise elicits virtue; she felt herself at school to an
all-wise Father, who appointed for her the lessons best suited to bring out
that unfailing trust which was conspicuous in her character, and which, in
spite of her many trials, bore her cheerily throughout them all. Yes,
cheerfulness was (as is attested by all who knew her) Bridget's most
amiable characteristic, and it proceeded from her implicit trust in God.
She had a martyr's courage and a martyr's love, and I think it would be
risking little to suppose that even now she may be wearing in heaven the
martyr's crown. Yet she passed through the world unnoticed, and certainly
was not counted among its heroines."


  CHAPTER XXIX.

Immediately after the funeral Adelaide called on the abbé, according to her
promise. She was accompanied by Hester.

"Well," said the good father as soon as the preliminary compliments had
passed, "as you have taken possession of four of my spiritual children, to
whom I am in some sort a guardian, you must allow me to ask your name and
state. You are a stranger in this city, it appears.'

"I am. My name is Adelaide: I am a widow."

"And the name of your husband?"

"My husband was the late Duke of Durimond."

The father started: he looked again. "That accounts for my fancy," he said.
"I was sure I had seen you before. I recognize you perfectly now:' but what
can bring your grace hither, and in this guise?"

"Father," said Adelaide, "I came to apologize to you for my conduct on that
dreary occasion that you know of; to beg your pardon and your prayers."

The good priest raised the lady, for Adelaide had knelt to him as she
uttered the last words. "You have my prayers, my child," he said; "you have
long had them: it was his last request that I should daily pray for you.
And as for pardon, such an act of humility would redeem a worse offence. Be
at peace, I beg of you."

"And did the duke really interest himself on my account?"

"He did, and most sincerely; it was a constant topic with him. He ever
maintained that, with your nobility of character, you must eventually
follow in your brother's footsteps. I presume I may conclude you have now
done so."

"Not so, father. Hester (whom you probably also recognize) and myself are
but inquirers as yet, and the difficulty is that our inquiry must not be
suspected just now. We came to request assistance from your charity; but we
beg you not to name us otherwise than as ladies of your acquaintance. The
Misses Godfrey will pass unheeded by, but if you address me as your grace
again, you will bring upon us the attention we are trying to avoid."

"I will try to remember Miss Godfrey; it will be a little difficult, I
fear, but I need not tell you my services are at your disposal."

{39}

"This is indeed returning good for evil," said Adelaide.

"Do not speak of it; good has already come of that to which you allude, as
is usually the case if we wait long enough. Let the past be past. But
surely I have seen you both at mass; you have, then, lost your prejudice
against the church."

"Indeed, yes," said Adelaide. "Our great regret is that we have not faith.
The system which you propose is beautiful in all its bearings. It is our
torment to feel that all that is beautiful in poetry or in art, nay, even
in ethics, belongs to Catholicity, yet we do not belong to it. A hall of
sculpture representing the Catholic ideal, as the figures of the duke's
pantheon represent the pagan myth, would form the most sublime elucidation
of the high triumphs of soul over self that could be imagined. There is no
act of heroism, mental, moral, or physical, that would not find a
representative in some authenticated historic personage. From martyrdom
endured to maintain the truth of alleged facts, to voluntary poverty chosen
as the best preservative of the disposition to receive and maintain truth,
there is a regular chain of virtue personified. There is a reality about
Catholicity (in books at least) which we find nowhere else."

"Where is your difficulty, seeing that you admit all this?"

"I can hardly explain it, yet it seems to shape itself thus: Why, if men
are so blessed with a divine religion, is the world so bad? History gives
us saints, sublime ones, who make our very souls thrill with the recital of
their unselfish spirt, exemplified in act; but, on the other hand, the same
history tells us of multitudes of bad men for one good one. The men who
attempted to poison St. Benedict, were monks, men who had renounced all for
Christ; and the multitudes were Catholic up to the fifteenth century, yet
what fearful struggles for power, and indulgence of luxury in high places,
and of crime among all, high and low! Most of the saints were reformers,
combating with their fellow-Catholics for virtue; and now, are all
Catholics unselfish, unworldly?"

"It seems," said Hester, "that a very definite amount of good has been
achieved by Christianity, in giving an impetus to the spirit of the masses
to claim intellectual rights by the recognition of man's spiritual equality
before God; and to strip off illegitimate uses of power from the sense of
justice thus evolved. It has also placed our sex on a footing permitted by
no other religion--this is much, very much; but here it seems to stop, and
these are but indirect results. Religion professes to inculcate higher
motives than the improvement of earthly position, desirable as this may be.
Men are now selfish in their avowed principle, and this, I think, must
ultimately destroy all that has been achieved. Self-gratification as a
motive, and the only motive recognized, must lead back to want of
discipline, and from that the step to barbarism is easy. Only under the
Christian dispensation has labor been honored; in all other civilizations,
slaves, captives of the sword and spear, have performed by compulsion the
work of tilling the soil and so forth; and yet men now seek to avoid labor,
the real labor of producing, as if they still thought it fit for slaves
only; any other kind of occupation is preferred, as more noble. If this is
the result of eighteen hundred years of Christian teaching, I own it
puzzles me. Where are the direct results of unselfishness and of corporal
sacrifice for the attainment of spiritual good, that books teach us to
expect?"

"These are very painful facts," said the abbé, "which distress the heart of
many a Catholic priest; but with reference to their influence on faith, I
think a little reflection will explain most of the phenomena without
prejudice to such souls as are earnestly seeking truth. We must remember
that there was a time when whole nations suddenly assumed the name of
Christians under the influence of the ruling powers.
{40}
The majority of these people were not only ignorant, but many did not care
to learn high spiritual truths; the conversion was necessarily partial,
even that which was genuine. But because all divine truth is positive and
co-relative to natural truth, some degree of enlightenment followed even in
the natural order; and worldly minds, who had no affinity for spiritual
revelations laid hold, notwithstanding this, of the types that presented
spiritual truths, and, finding they bore an earthly signification also (as
all real enlightenment does, the body being the mate for the soul), they
seized on the lower meaning, and hence the civilization of that ilk. This
is not wrong, but it is defective; as far as it is moral, it is the
material expression of a spiritual idea; but it does not touch the first
step of the ladder by which we rise to God--it is the lesser influence of a
principle comprehending affinities of an infinitely higher character."

"But this does not explain the corruption in high places."

"Power and greatness and wealth do not confer spirituality; no, nor does
intellect. When the church grew wealthy and powerful, many a wolf entered
in sheep's clothing for the sake of the perquisites. The miracle is that
the church survived such destructive influences, not that she suffered by
them."

"And the more immediate trouble with the present conduct of Catholics?"

"May be referred to similar causes. They inherit their religion without
giving its real conditions a thought; to this may be added the fact that,
for the last three hundred years, the attention of immense numbers has been
directed to polemics instead of to the requirements of religion. There have
been so many disputes about which is the true faith, that practically faith
has been assumed to mean 'holding a correct intellectual creed.' Now,
without derogating, in the least degree, from the importance of holding the
right faith, even in this light, it is certain that these controversies
have drawn the soul from that more serious business to which a right
intellectual creed is but the first step, though an important, a very
important one. The object of religion is, the union of the soul to the will
of God. This is an individual matter, one which cannot be laid hold of
_en masse_, but must be personally brought home to every individual.
To effect this, there must be;
  1. Desire of good--real, earnest, sincere.
  2. Prayer for good, arising from the firm conviction that in God
     only resides all good--from him only all good can come.
  3. Co-operation in act, including not only correct moral action,
     but a constant endeavor to instruct ourselves, more and more, in
     divine lore, with an earnest zeal of rising continually in spiritual
     life.
Now, if you examine these conditions, you will find that few observe them,
compared with the numbers who bear the name of Catholics--and the power of
Catholicity must he judged of by its effect on those who observe its
precepts, not by the multitudes who conform by halves, or by less than that
proportion, to its teachings. You would not judge of the effect of a
medicine by those who keep it in their houses, but by those who take it."

"Are not those Catholics, then, who do not act up to their religion?"

"In as far as they neglect their religion they are imperfect Catholics. It
would, however, be very dangerous for us to judge how far their
imperfections arise from culpability on their part. All men are wounded by
the fall in some shape or other; some have this faculty impaired, some
that; consequently there will be gradations of virtue apparent everywhere,
the cause of which we cannot fathom, and the delinquencies of which we
cannot judge. As regards judgment, all we have to do with is with
ourselves; our faculties, great or little, with imperfections greater or
less, must, as far as in us lies be devoted to God--be improved for him--be
exercised in accordance with his will as manifested to us. 'This do and ye
shall live.'"

{41}

    Chapter XXX.

    An Interview And A Letter.

It were superfluous to reiterate the instructions given by the good abbé to
the neophytes under his guidance; where the instructor is learned, patient,
and gentle, and the learner docile and humble, the result may be easily
predicted. One day, in the course of conversation, the abbé said to
Adelaide: "If you are looking for examples in Christian life, I could name
one living in this neighborhood, living so simple and beautiful a life,
that those who have the happiness of knowing her, half believe her to be an
angel in disguise."

"I think I know whom you mean," said Adelaide; "already have I paused at
the threshold of her dwelling, wishing to enter, but hardly knowing whether
I dared."

"She will be glad to see you. She has a better memory than I; she
recognized you at church, and has interested herself warmly in your
conversion."

Thus encouraged Adelaide ventured on the visit. The greeting between the
two ladies was that of _sisters_; they wept together, clasping each
other's hand in silence. We pass over the exciting scene. Adelaide was
completely fascinated by all she saw. For the first time in her life she
felt that glow of thrilling interest that binds heart to heart, and makes
us know what real love is, when that love is founded in God. Ellen was one
of those happy temperaments, so rare on earth, that seem formed to dispense
the sunshine of happiness on all who came under their influence. Heaven
seemed to have descended to earth to dwell with her, and in that heaven she
had learned to live--out of herself altogether. Her life was passed in
doing good, but, so unconsciously to herself was that good done, that she
seemed but to be following her own pleasure all the time. The one great
sorrow of her life surmounted, she had resigned herself (no! resignation
would not express the depth of her devotedness); rather had she thrown her
whole being into the profound abyss of the mystery of God, seeking only his
will, mysterious as it was to her. She came at last to live as a child on
the daily promise, forming no plans, asking nothing of the morrow, but ever
seeking to pour out her great love in making others happy. The poor, the
sick, the wretched, were her friends, her children, the objects of her
tenderness, and her presence was to them as a ray of sunshine to lighten
every woe. There are few Ellens on this weary earth, for nature and grace
seemed to combine in her to diffuse their charms. Those who knew her asked
themselves, where was her share of the original taint, "of that trail of
the serpent which is over us all"? Though Adelaide's senior by many years,
she had so youthful, so buoyant an expression, albeit chastened by the
atmosphere of purity and sanctity in which she moved, that you could not
connect the idea of _age_ with her frame at all. Adelaide felt that
she had obtained a friend, a sister, a guide for the future, and a
friendship was quickly cemented between the two that ended but with life.

Meantime the hour approached when the sisters were to be received into the
church. Hester was not a little agitated as she thought of the effect that
would be produced upon her father: it was as much as Adelaide and Ellen
could do with their united efforts to calm her fears. Adelaide's firm mind
bade her take her resolution according to her conviction, and face the
consequences like a soldier.

"Yes, if they were consequences to myself," sighed Hester; "but my future,
will it not suffer from it? Suppose he should sicken as my mother did!"

"Dear Hester," said Ellen, "you must leave off trusting yourself, in this
manner, and apprehending consequences, as if you had the control of events.
Do you not believe God reigns omnipotent?"

"Why, yes, certainly I do."

"Then let your first offering to him be a practical recognition of that
belief; trust him for your father as well as for yourself."

{42}

Hester had had deeds prepared, restoring, as best she might, the property
which had been appropriated to her experiments, to its former destination.
To her father during life was the income of the estate assigned; to her
brother the reversion. For herself she reserved only that portion which she
had a right to consider as her share.

The deeds were handed to Eugene for his inspection the night on which he
arrived at the abbé's abode, on the day previous to that on which the
ceremony was to take place.

"This was not necessary," he said to the abbé, "I had already given up my
right, and was reconciled to the result."

"That is a question for you to settle with your sister, my young friend,"
said the abbé. "The young lady has acted on her own sense of what was
fitting in the matter. She did not consult me, and if she had I should have
declined interference in family matters; but I think you will hurt her
feelings if you make objections. Wait at least till her mind is more
composed; she is just now agitated on her father's account: best let the
first excitement pass away, ere you disturb her mind again."

The ceremony was a private one, for it was a matter yet to be considered
how to break the matter to Mr. Godfrey. After its performance, the brother
and sisters were yet in consultation about the advisability of setting out
at once for London, when a courier was announced from the Marquis de
Villeneuve, with a letter to Hester. The young lady glanced over the
contents, then suddenly rose, and locked herself in her own room. Eugene
invited the man to wait. But it was some hours ere Hester admitted even her
sister to her apartment. Thus ran the letter:

  To Miss Hester Godfrey.
  "Most Honored Lady:

  I have been many times at H*** lately, but dared not ventured to see you,
  although from some words which my friend the abbé let fall, I rejoiced to
  learn that the object of your visit was the realization of anticipations
  I had long indulged in. I have long felt convinced that a mind so earnest
  as yours must finally seek refuge in the ark of the true church. I dared
  not disturb your retreat; I dared not intrude on the visible work of God.
  But let me be the first to offer my congratulations; let me now express
  the high regard, esteem, nay, may I use a softer word, and say love, with
  which I have long regarded you.

  "Lady, I will not speak to you in the language of passion; for a long
  time past I have had to keep my feelings under control, for deep as has
  been my admiration of yourself I dared not make you aware of it while the
  obstacle of faith stood between us. A Catholic man seeks in marriage a
  HELP-MEET for him, a partner in joy, a soother in sorrow, a confidant and
  co-operator in his views, a companion and a friend under every reverse.
  To set out with diverse sustaining powers would mar this idea in the
  outset, to say nothing of the want of that special blessing which God
  confers on those he himself joins together.

  "Dear lady, when I came to Europe some few years ago, it was with the
  special intention of taking back a wife. When my friend De Meglior in
  that most solemn hour before his death confided to me the care of his
  daughter, I thought the companion I sought for was found; but Euphrasie
  soon showed herself so visibly the elected bride of heaven that all my
  anxiety was quickly directed to preserving her from sacrilege. You then
  came before me, with your earnest mind, your indomitable courage, your
  high intellect and intensity of zeal. From that time my heart was no
  longer my own, though I dared not give utterance to its desires. The
  obstacle which stood between us is removed, yet I dare not venture into
  your presence without your sanction; I should feel a repulse too keenly.

  "Lady, my father was an enthusiast like yourself. He went to America in
  the hope of doing his part to sanctify the career of intelligence and of
  liberty opened for the first time in the world's history for the laboring
  classes as a body. He helped to build churches, to found schools in
  conjunction with ecclesiastical authority, and did whatever a secular
  could do to guide a movement which he respected and sympathized with, but
  one which he felt would be exposed to great peril, unless that divine
  principle which is the true source of government both in the family and
  in the state, could be brought to bear upon it.
{43}
  He feared that 'liberty' on a mere rationalistic principle, that is,
  standing on purely human strength, severed from the divine idea which
  gave it being, would, however beautiful in its poetry, soon degenerate
  into license; soon succumb beneath the empire of passion, and be led to
  tolerate laws subversive of true progress. It was the aim of his life to
  inculcate that 'Truth is one;' that the human idea cannot be disjoined
  from the divine idea without fatal results; that real earthly happiness,
  through differing in intensity, is the same in essence as that we look to
  enjoy hereafter in heaven. That all earthly intelligence, an earthly
  beneficence which seeks permanence, must be founded on the repression of
  such inordinate desire as impede and frustrate the development and
  employment of our higher faculties. For all beauty, harmony, and love
  must be brought out in accordance with that law of the spirit, which he
  has given us, as our rule of action, we being children of the spirit.

  "The working out of this purpose is the legacy which my dear father,
  lately deceased, has bequeathed unto his children. To this purpose I have
  consecrated myself; and because I know your high power of intellect,
  because I have witnessed your zeal, your energy, your devotedness to
  good, I ask you to become the help-meet to carry out this purpose.

  "In all ages of the church, since the first miracle was performed at the
  request of Mary, woman's aid has been in requisition for high purposes.
  The conversion of every nation of Europe is associated with the name of a
  woman, and woman gives the tone to society in every Christian land. I
  feel then that without the aid thus specially appointed for man, my
  father's purposes would lose more than half the influence necessary to
  carry them out. But working together, under the sanction of the church,
  surely two earnest minds might hope to effect something. If we cannot
  make an impression on a world of infidelity, it will yet be something if
  we are allowed to instill into the minds of Catholic children, that
  'Credo' means something more than an intellectual assent to a series of
  metaphysical dogmas. If we can assist the self-sacrificing pastors of the
  church in rehabilitating the idea of the divine institution of the family
  and of the state which is fast vanishing beneath the crude notions of
  human progress which sanction so easily the dissolution of sacred
  ties--if we can throw whatever influence we do possess into the right
  scale, we shall then have ample reason to begin a rejoicing which shall
  last for ever. For there is the promise that however gloomy the
  appearance, error shall not ultimately prevail, and happy are they who
  here on earth shall have formed the royal guard of honor around the
  citadel of Truth, who shall have stood as sentinels appointed to watch
  beneath its glorious standard, when the combat is at highest.

  "Dear lady, may I hope you will think this an object worthy of your
  ambition? may I hope you will regard with favor one who has loved you so
  long, though he dared not confess it until to-day?

  "One word from you will bring me to your feet. May I hope that word will
  be spoken?

    Edward De Villeneuve."

"Well," said Adelaide, when at length she gained admission, and had taken
the letter from her sister's unresisting hand, "I think you have kept the
courier waiting long enough, and 'tis not a long answer the poor man wants,
since one word is all he asks."

"What will my father say, Adelaide?"

"The old marquis was my father's most dearly loved friend. He will accept
the son for the father's sake; the question is, will you accept him?"

"I have never thought of marrying at all."

"No, but you admire this gentleman. Your eyes, your voice betray you. I
shall send him the one word he asks for so prettily."

"You will do no such thing;" but Adelaide had glided from the room, and
shortly after Eugene set forth with the courier in quest of his friend,
whom he finally succeeded in persuading to return with him, without
awaiting a response to his missive.

It is not our intention to present to our readers the details of the scenes
that followed within the next few weeks; we leave to their more vivid
imaginations to fancy the arguments by which M. de Villeneuve won the
consent of his ideal lady. A few days more, and he was travelling to London
with Eugene to obtain the formal consent of Mr. Godfrey.

"Is that the secret of Hester's dejection?" thought the father, and that
thought made his consent the readier.

"But how can you, so staunch a member of the church, resolve to marry a
heretic?"

"Hester it no heretic," replied the marquis.

"Love covers all faults, I see," said Mr. Godfrey, smiling. "Well, settle
that matter between yourselves, only you must put no constraint on Hester
on the score of religion. She is a spoiled child, and would ill brook
opposition; it would break her heart if it came from one she loved."

{44}

The arrival of the carriage which brought Hester and the duchess back to
the mansion, put an end to the colloquy, and at the next consultation with
the ladies the marquis suggested that, seeing Mr. Godfrey had already laid
hold of the wrong idea, it was as well to let time undeceive him in a
natural way. "Your English law," said he, "compels marriage to be legalized
by the English establishment. We will receive the sacrament of marriage
privately in the morning and legalize it in your drawing-room afterward,
before an English minister.[Footnote 7] After Hester is once my wife, Mr.
Godfrey will not take it to heart that she should follow her husband's
religion, even if he inquire about the matter." And thus the matter was
managed, and the marquis and his lovely bride were already on the point of
starting on their wedding tour, when a startling missive from Annie threw
all the circle in commotion. Sir Philip Conway had been thrown from his
horse while hunting, and had broken his neck. But his wickedness had
outlived him; he had left orders in his will that his wife should be
debarred access to his house, or to his children, further providing that
neither of those children should inherit one acre of land or one shilling
of his property unless they were brought up apart from their mother.
Annie's letter was dated from a hotel near to her late husband's
dwelling-house.

    [Footnote 7: This was the case before the passing of the Catholic
    Emancipation Bill.]

"I doubt their power to enforce that will," said Eugene, as be handed the
letter to his father, after reading it aloud.

"And so do I," said Adelaide; "at all events, Annie shall have her
children, property or no property."

The marquis, Hester, all the party present expressed in varied tones their
indignation, and Mr. Godfrey, borne along by the current of family opinion,
at length joined in the resolve to see Annie replaced in possession of the
children _coute qui coute_. The wedding trip took the direction of Sir
Philip's dwelling, and as soon as it was ascertained that the funeral was
over, Adelaide, with that determination that marked her character, drove up
to the house, accompanied by the party comprising her father, brother, the
marquis, and Hester. She demanded to see the children. The dowager Lady
Conway appeared with her daughter. The duchess bowed, and requested to see
the children.

The lady hemmed--hesitated--did not know. "The children were under the
guardianship of Mr. Brookbank," she said; she supposed he must be
consulted.

The name seemed to strike the marquis. "What Brookbank?" he asked.

"He was Sir Philip's agent and man of business, and is left his executor."

"Is he any relative to the family at Estcourt?"

"Why, yes, it is the same family; they have moved here."

The entrance of the gentleman in question put an end to the questioning,
but the marquis kept a sharp eye upon him.

With smooth, bland words and deprecating gestures, Alfred Brookbank
proceeded to explain to the duchess that it was his duty, his very painful
duty, to deny her grace's request at the present moment, until measures had
been taken to secure the due and legal administration of Sir Philip's will.
Adelaide's indignant remonstrances were unheeded, and a very painful
feeling was pervading the party, when suddenly M. de Villeneuve rose and
said: "Mr. Brookbank, may I beg the favor of a few words in private?"
Alfred rose, and led the way to another apartment. Half an-hour elapsed;
the party awaited the event in silence. Alfred did not return, but the
marquis did, and with him entered the two children and their nurse,
equipped for a drive.
{45}
With a bow, the marquis addressed the ladies of the house: "Mr. Brookbank
has consented to entrust the guardianship of these two children to me for
the present. I have the honor to wish you good morning." His wife and the
rest of the party rose at his signal, and departed, carrying off the
children with them.

"Now," said he, when they were once more together, "let no one ask me how
this was managed, because I have passed my word that so long as Lady Conway
is not molested in her custody of these children, I will explain nothing. I
do not know how the law will decide respecting the property; Mr. Godfrey
will, perhaps, see to that. But I wish Lady Conway and her children could
be prevailed upon to cross the Atlantic with us; I fear leaving that fellow
any legal power, when I am out of the way to hold him to the bargain he
made with me to-day."

"I will go with you, Annie, if you like to take the trip," said Eugene.

"And Euphrasie and the dear nuns are going," said Annie; "I am willing to
travel in such good company."

. . . . . .


    Chapter XXXI.

    America.

Two years have passed since the events happened which we last presented to
our readers: it is on the other side of the Atlantic that our view now
opens, but the friends we greet are of those we left behind.

The scene is in a beautiful extensive garden, well planted with trees;
behind, on an eminence, rises a large white house with numerous piazzas
which contrast pleasingly with the green sward and shrubs before it. The
slope before the house is covered with groups of children weaving garlands,
for it is a holiday, the feast of St. Aloysius; and all the schools have
freed their pupils great and small. Feeling the privilege of the day, the
children have bounded into the grounds of their patrons, M. and Madame de
Villeneuve. They knew that a strawberry festival was preparing for them,
and on their parts were anxious to be busy. Festoons were hung from pillar
to pillar. The large refectory was opened, and the walls garlanded; merry
voices were singing childish hymns and songs, and good humor was visible
everywhere.

The grounds were very spacious; far away might be seen grown persons in
holiday-trim; lads and lasses preparing the tables, and a band of music
sending up, every now and then, cheery notes to gladden all around.

In yonder silent glade too, half hid by the thickness of the foliage,
Eugene Godfrey is walking with his young bride; they are not yet past the
honeymoon, and are bound for England. To-morrow is the day fixed for their
departure, and the lady-bride; formerly Elise de Villeneuve, the youngest
and fairest daughter of the house of De Villeneuve, is sentimentalizing
very prettily her regrets at leaving, perhaps for ever, the paternal
mansion.

Clotilde de Villeneuve, who has already entered as a postulant at the
convent which is visible on that eminence to the right--rising majestically
above the world and backed in the distance by the interminable forest; from
which it is separated by that lovely series of lakes which lie at the foot
of the hill on which the building stands--Clotilde de Villeneuve has for
this one day consented to break inclosure that she may bid good-by to the
young sister she brought up so carefully since her mother died.

There is another lady there, looking fairer and younger than when we saw
her last, giving directions in a very pleasing tone; and ever and anon
looking back, a little anxiously perhaps, to see what two young girls were
doing with a something in a bundle of white muslin, which seemed very
animated, and which the nurses are trying to kill with kindness.

{46}

The pastor approaches, a fine old man with mild eyes, white hair, and a
very benevolent aspect. All the little ones rise and courtesy, and Hester,
yes, our old friend Hester, comes forward to greet him affectionately.

"Where is your husband, my dear lady?" asked the good priest, after
returning the preliminary greeting.

"Well, I hardly know, he has been on the _qui vive_ all day, here and
there and everywhere. I hardly know where he is now. Do you want him
particularly, father? You seem uneasy."

"Let us go in out of this hot sun," said the pastor, wiping his forehead.

They adjourned to the parlor, which opened on both sides to a piazza shaded
by climbing plants, and thus promised a cool retreat. Hester handed the old
gentleman a refreshing drink, for he seemed weary and excited. On setting
down the glass, be whispered: "Are we alone here? Is anyone listening?"

"Not that I am aware of." said Hester, glancing in all directions. "I see
no one, father, what is the matter?"

"There is mischief brewing in the city yonder; I want to see your husband.
For the last six weeks there has been a strange man there, of singular
eloquence, fomenting discord about Catholics, getting up a no-popery cry,
uttering fearful scandals concerning the convent; to-night the people
threaten to burn it down."

"Can this be true? Who is your informant?"

"My man Walter. It seems he knew the stranger in England."

"I know Edward has been annoyed with reports of some plots, but he thought
as little about it as he could; he never harmed any body, and cannot
imagine any body would harm him."

"This is a religions or rather a fanatical plot. What the purpose is, it is
difficult to discover. The designer means something dark, you may be sure,
the multitude are but his tools. He has used all the plea he could find;
have not your committees refused many applications to receive pupils?"

"Yes, Edward acts on his father's plan, and he says the old marquis always
insisted that a child was more formed by his companions than by his
teachers; that one dissipated worldly companion would contaminate a school.
It seems he loved real children, and hated the little bits of affectation,
aping men and women, which we now so often see; so Edward will positively
not have a child in the schools unless he knows the home influence they are
under. In fact, our schools are not only exclusively Catholic, those we
call normal schools are open only to picked Catholics. Edward wants them to
turn out good and efficient teachers of practical Catholicity, and before
he receives a pupil he not only exacts certain promises from the children,
but from the parents also, as to the influence they will exercise from a
distance. As long as they attend his schools they are under certain
restrictions, at home as well as abroad."

"All this is good for the children, but it has made enemies. Those out of
the pale pretend something must be wrong in so exclusive a system; they are
jealous of advantages from which their children are excluded."

"But a great deal of the influence exerted is purely religious; how can we
bring that influence to bear on such as are not Catholics, or who are
worldly Catholics, who come merely for secular advantages?"

"I am not saying you are not right; I only say you have made enemies."

"I believe my husband would rather give up the schools than compromise his
principles. He has been intimately acquainted with the management of some
Catholic schools in which all parties were admitted: the rule was to all
alike, it was difficult to make a distinction. Children, non-Catholics,
were admitted to religious societies, services, and processions.
{47}
He has a very firm conviction that the result was that they were led to
believe that assisting with due outward decorum, without the internal
feeling of reverence, was all that Catholicity required; while the
Catholics themselves, seeing others without faith were thus admitted,
naturally ceased to regard faith as so essential a matter as the sermons
heard in church proclaim it to be, and became liberal Catholics when they
retained their faith at all. My husband knows he is called bigoted, but I
do not think it has changed his feeling. He thinks the Catholic school a
sacred place; and the soul of a little baptized child a thing to be guarded
with reverential awe."

"Yes, I know De Villeneuve's reverence: he should have lived in the times
when the catechumens were driven out of the church before the sacred
mysteries could be performed."

"Indeed, father, I have seen his whole frame quiver with terror when any
one, Catholic or non-Catholic, behaved irreverently in the presence of the
blessed sacrament. He maintains that the worldliness of the age springs
from the want of this reverence."

"He may be right, but meantime we must provide for the present safety. Your
brother is not gone?"

"No, he starts to-morrow. I will send for him to come and see you."

M. de Villeneuve was not to be found, for the very cause that brought the
priest to his dwelling. He was in earnest conference with the priest's man
Walter on the subject of the projected attack. "Are you sure it was your
brother that you saw?"

"Quite sure, sir."

"You did not let him see you?"

"I did not; I was very careful on that point."

"And you are sure they fixed tonight?"

"Quite sure, but if disappointed tonight they will try some other night."

"Did you hear of any one person marked out for any special object."

"There will be an attempt made to carry off Lady Conway and her children."

"I suspected as much. Well, we must be prepared; I will row Lady Conway
across the lake, and you can drive her up the country to neighbor
Friendly's house, without anyone suspecting the matter. Be silent and
cautious, I will prepare watches secretly. You get home as quickly as you
can from the drive."

"I will, sir."

The _fête_ passed off without any alarm: no one would have dreamed
that an attack was expected. The nuns one by one left the convent, which
was supposed to be the object aimed at by the attack, and let the watchers
guard the dwelling, while they took refuge at M. de Villeneuve's mansion.
They dared not alarm the inmates of the school-house, which they thought
was left out of the plot, lest their plan of safety should be frustrated.
But an armed band watched over its safety in the hovels, and wherever they
could be stationed unseen.

It was a dreary watch, though a lovely night; the round, full moon threw
its splendid light over hill and and valley, lake and forest glades. Not a
sound was heard. The watchers did not trust themselves to speak, lest they
should give the alarm outside. Eleven, twelve, one, two; shall we wait
longer? Yes, there is a sound outside; the out-houses are already on fire,
and the school-house and the convent--all at once. A whole multitude of
rioters are in the grounds; they force the convent doors, and, to their
surprise, are met by armed men.

"Save, save the children," is the cry; "let everything go, even the
prisoners, till they are saved." There is no engine, the city is so far
away, and rioters are all around; but ladders had been prepared during the
day, and everyone was soon in requisition. But the fire seemed then the
least evil, for as each young lady was borne from the flames a mob
surrounded her, and a fight ensued for possession. It was a terrible scene,
the more terrible as it was impossible to get the children and teachers
together to see if all were there.
{48}
There was no resource but to fire on the assailants, and accordingly a
volley was discharged. This sobered the people somewhat; they loosed their
hold and fled. One man, with a few followers, lingered awhile, apparently
very anxious still to examine the parties saved; he was observed and seized
by a strong hand and bound. Alfred Brookbank was the prisoner of his
brother Walter.

And now are the pupils all saved? for the house is burning fast. How
anxiously they were counted! What a relief to find them all there! There
were no lives lost, and but that the building had been fired in many places
at once, that could have been saved by the valiant arms who were there to
defend it. But the evil work had been done effectually, the convent and
school-house were level with the ground. Many of the valuables had been
removed the day before; but the furniture was destroyed. The newspapers
said it was the work of the mob; yes, but that mob was excited by one man's
revengeful soul, which had animated the spirit of that mob to frenzy.
Americans are too generous to make war upon defenceless women, unless
incited thereto by some false tale of wickedness.

To bring the poor frightened children into the house, and to send to the
city for police, occupied nearly all the night, and part of the next day;
and then they took time to examine the prisoner who had been cast bound
into the cellar. He was crest-fallen and terror-smitten at last! He knew
the tale of terror his brother would have to tell; the quarrel about the
estate; the offer to compromise; the attempt to drown him by throwing him
over-board near the falls; and, finally, the belief on Alfred's part that
the crime had been consummated when a body, disfigured and shapeless, had
been picked up below the falls. He did not wait long in jail to have this
and a long catalogue brought out against him--he died by his own hand.

Walter Brookbank wandering, restless, and dissipated, had been seized with
fever in a wretched hovel, where he was found by some poor Catholics, who
brought the priest (then on a mission in that district) to see him. The
priest had him tended and cared for till he was well, then invited him to
his house, and converted him to a Christian life; redeemed him doubly,
first from the death of this life, then from that of the next. Walter had
been grateful, and preferred to live henceforth as servant of the church,
than to re-encounter the perils of the world by claiming his inheritance;
it passed by default to his mother and sisters.

Our tale draws to its conclusion.

The multitude who, deceived by Alfred Brookbank's inflammatory tongue, had
fired the convent, slunk away to their homes, ashamed, at length, of having
expended all their energy in a cowardly attack on defenceless women and
children. Would I could say they repented and endeavored to repair the
mischief; but it was not so, the convent was rebuilt, but it was by
Catholic money, by Catholic hands, and by Catholic hearts; and save the
ring-leader, who, as we have seen, judged himself, the perpetrators of the
dastardly deed remained unsought for by the authorities, undiscovered and
unpunished.

This event checked for a while the work of the good society which M. de
Villeneuve had founded, and of which he was the president and the "animus."
This society was composed of enlightened Catholic fathers and mothers, who
were fervent in their desires of establishing high Catholic education on a
firm and practical basis. It was a committee formed to aid the practice of
those precepts delivered by the zealous pastors of the church; to examine
the books put into the hands of children, and to have them written, if none
suitable were found, on the subjects required; to discuss all points of
discipline recommended to them by the teachers, and provide that the
financial department should not harass those who had charge of the
intellectual department.
{49}
They were outside co-operators in the good work of education; valuable
coadjutors in a matter in which it concerns every good Catholic to interest
himself, for society is made up of individuals, and on the good training of
those individuals depends the public welfare.

Their schools comprised both sexes; I will now speak of the girls only, as
it was the matter in which our friend Hester most interested herself, for
the reason that she thought that the formation of good women, wives and
mothers, is lost sight of in the fashionable circles of our large cities.
She had discovered that the fathers and husbands (men of large wealth and
of thriving business) were, through the extravagance and non-domesticity of
their families (more particularly of their wives and daughters), leading a
life of torture under the appearance of prosperity; and that young men,
with incomes of from $1,500 to $2,000 a year, shrank from marrying, because
of the extravagance and selfishness they daily witnessed among the ladies.
"Now," said Hester, with something of her old positiveness, "if this is so,
the responsibility of the shame and degradation of so many unfortunate
women lies at the door of the rich and honored ladies who turn aside from
them in disgust, and the education of true women must be the basis of the
renovation of society: for to woman's influence is confided the happiness
of the family, as to family influence is committed the guardianship of the
state. Where the family is out of joint, the state will be out of joint
too. O my dear Edward! I now comprehend the prophecy you think so much of:
'That the worship of the blessed mother of God will be in after times one
such as is not dreamed of in the present age of disruption. The blessed
Virgin is the example of all womanhood; the family of Nazareth the true
type of the Christian family; labor, purity, intelligence, submission, such
must be the watchwords of all womanly training; such will form happy
households and forward true progress.'"

The objects of the educational institutions at Villeneuve were in strict
accordance with these views; they comprised several classes, and in each
class were several departments.

The highest was that of a boarding-school, regulated by the nuns
themselves; it was within the enclosure, though apart from the convent, and
having its own allotted grounds. It was a normal school, the object of
which was to prepare efficient school teachers for the parochial schools
throughout the country. No pupil could enter this establishment under
fifteen years of age, or for a shorter period than three years; and if at
the end of that time she had won her diploma, she was expected for the two
years following to place herself at the disposal of the church, to teach
any parochial school that might require such assistance. Besides the
thorough course of instruction given during these three years, to enable
the pupils to fulfil their duties efficiently as school-teachers, and to
keep pace with the secular knowledge required by the age, the pupils were
required to do all their own work: they took it by turns to provide for the
household; the cooking, washing, every part of the household work, and
making their own clothes, were all done by themselves; so that at the end
of the five years, when their term of teaching had expired, they were ready
to become either efficient members of society, fit to perform the duty of
wife, mother, or teacher, or to enter religion, should such prove to be
their vocation.

The second class of schools were named the probation schools; these, in
their various departments, received children of all ages under fifteen, but
Catholics only. The parents of the children attending these schools were
required to give a guarantee that, during the children's attendance at
these schools, they should not be allowed to read either novels or any
other books not approved by the committee, nor attend any place of
amusement disapproved by the church.
{50}
In fact, during their attendance at school, it was a part of the labor of
the directors to provide suitable relaxation within the school grounds,
that they might the more easily discourage all dissipation outside. There
were also regulations concerning deportment and dress, which formed very
efficient aids in inculcating Christian manners, but the details of which
it is not necessary to give here.

These schools are supposed to be the Christian schools _par
pre-eminence_. The young ladies of the first-named schools were much
sought as wives, when their excellence became known; most of them could
have married rich men, had they chosen to marry out of the church, but
this, I need hardly say, they refused to do. Many entered teaching
sisterhoods, and proved very efficient members of the society which they
joined.

The children of the second series were, on the other hand, simple, joyous,
affectionate, pious, and obedient. The age for childhood was renewed, and
the results were very pleasing.

Besides these, the committee prevailed on M. de Villeneuve to establish
(after the incendiary fire) general schools open to the community at large.
In these schools the routine was Catholic; none but Catholic books were
admitted, and as much Catholic training was introduced as the public mind
would bear. These institutions were thronged, for the teachers were
efficient, and the discipline much approved of. These were the best
remunerating schools of the series. But M. de Villeneuve could never be
brought to be satisfied with the results, and only in deference to the
wishes of his friends did he tolerate them at all. His chief care was to
prevent children from these schools being admitted to serve in the church
or to take part in religious processions, until they had been well proved,
and then he wished them removed to the Christian schools before he
presented them to the pastor. Many thought the man a monomaniac, he had so
great a horror of sacrilege, or indeed of witnessing any irreverence in the
church at all. Strangely enough, his wife Hester saw in this only an
additional virtue, which she endeavored to assist her husband in enforcing,
as indeed she did in all his regulations.

A week or two after the fire, when the excitement had somewhat subsided,
Eugene took his young wife to England. He found that Adelaide had been so
busy during the past two years in providing orphan asylums, refuges, and
hospitals, and so forth, that Mr. Godfrey had been very frequently alone,
and this rendered him very glad to welcome his pretty, gentle
daughter-in-law, and he persuaded Eugene to establish himself at Estcourt
Hall, that he himself might have a home for his old age. In due time he
learnt to amuse himself with his, little grand-children, utterly forgetful
that they were members of a hated church. I never heard that be became a
Catholic himself.

Eugene soon found interest and employment in aiding the Catholic movement
which first agitated for emancipation, and then employed earnest minds in
co-operating with the declared will of the church, to give efficiency to
the measures which soon after provided a Catholic hierarchy for England.

As soon as Mr. Godfrey's comfort was provided for in Eugene's household,
Adelaide united her efforts to those of Ellen, and together they
established a society, which in after years developed itself as one of the
many orders of Mercy which bless the great city of London. Without a
uniform, though living under a rule, these ladies and their associates
perform countless deeds of charity and kindness, the origin of which is
often unknown to the recipients. Few among that saintly community are more
anxious to obey, or to humble themselves, than the once proud duchess.
Generous to all, to herself alone she became sparing and non-indulgent, and
if the voice of praise, often publicly lauding her, met her ear in private,
she would say, with a sigh, "Ah! how easy is all this, to give when we have
more than we want, and to love those who spend their life in toil for the
comfort and luxury of the wealthy.
{51}
But to love God as Bridget Norton loved him; to trust him when nothing but
clouds and darkness were around; to face starvation, disgrace, and all, in
trust that God would bring up those dear little ones for himself--this is
heroism. Oh! talk not of the goodness of the rich; they are great people in
this world of false show, but Bridget Norton called down the angels to
witness her death and bear her noble martyr soul to heaven."

. . . .

Annie's children rewarded her care; the boy became a worthy priest, and the
girl, after witnessing the consecration of her brother, requested
permission to enter the convent in which she was brought up. Mother and
daughter received the veil on the same day. All efforts to recover the
property for the children proved fruitless. But they had long since learned
that happiness does not consist in wealth.

------

    Original


    Kettle Song.


    Sing, kettle, sing!
    Busily boil away!
  My goodman to the field has gone,
    The children are out at play.

    Sing, kettle, sing!
    Sing me a merry song!
  You and I have company kept
    This many a year along.

    Sing, kettle, sing!
    I'll join with a low refrain--
  Needle and thread drawn through my work,
    Like steadily falling rain.

    Sing, kettle, sing!
    The far-off fancies come,
  But never a sad or a weary thought
    Along with your cheery hum.

    Sing, kettle, sing!
    The hearth is swept and clean,
  And the tidy broom in the corner stands
    Like a little household queen.

    Sing, kettle, sing!
    Evening is drawing nigh,
  The shadows are coming down the hill
    And coming up in the sky.

{52}

    Sing, kettle, sing!
    Shadows are on the wall--
  The last stitch done! a merry shout!
    And here are the rovers all!

    Sing, kettle, sing!
    By the merry candle-light,
  And you and I'll keep company
    Again to-morrow night!

           Fanny Fielding.

-------------

    Original.

    Ritualism.

    by John R. G. Hassard.


In one of the up-town streets of New-York there is a Protestant Episcopal
Church dedicated to St. Alban. It is externally a plain, unattractive
little building of brick and stone, in the early English style, with a
modest little porch, and a sharp high roof, surmounted by a belfry and a
cross. Within there is little to be seen in the way of ornament about the
body of the church. The seats are plain benches rather than pews, and are
free to all comers. But any one who should enter St. Alban's, not knowing
to what denomination it belonged, and should look toward the sanctuary,
would be very apt to fancy for a moment that he had got into a Catholic
Church. Let us imagine ourselves among the crowd of curious spectators who
fill the edifice of a Sunday morning. In place of the reading-desk
conspicuous in most Protestant meeting-houses, there is a very
proper-looking altar set back against the chancel wall, and ornamented with
a colored and embroidered antependium. Behind it, instead of a painting,
there is an illuminated screen-work, with inscriptions in old English
ecclesiastical text, not much easier to be read than if they were in Latin.
Where the tabernacle ought to be, stands a large gilt cross; on each side
of it are vases and ornaments. On a shelf which runs along the wall back of
the altar there are candlesticks, three tall ones at each side, and two
others just over the altar itself. We see altar-cards, such as are used at
mass; a burse for holding the corporal; and a chalice covered with a veil,
the color of which varies with the season of the ecclesiastical year. Today
not being a festival, the hue is green. At one end of the altar is a big
book on a movable stand. At the epistle side is a credence table with a
silver paten, on which is the wafer-bread for communion, and with vessels
of wine and water that might be called cruets if they were only a little
smaller. The pulpit stands just outside the railings on the left. There is
a little raised desk on it for the preachers's book or manuscript, and this
desk is covered with a green veil. Opposite the pulpit on the right hand
side is a lectern with a bible on it. The lectern likewise has green
hangings. On one side of the sanctuary is a row of stalls, precisely like
those we see in some of our cathedrals and seminary-chapels. On the other
are benches for the choristers. The organ is in a recess just behind them,
and the organist sits in the chancel, in full view of the people, with his
back to the instrument. He wears a white surplice, and presents altogether
a very respectable and ecclesiastical appearance.

{53}

The appointments of St. Alban's being so very much like those of a real
church, we shall not be surprised to find the service almost equally like a
real mass. At the appointed hour an acolyte in cassock and surplice lights
the two candles on the altar. Then we hear a chorus of male voices--
principally boys--intoning a chant, and presently a procession issues from
the vestry door and files into the chancel. First comes a lad wearing a
black cassock and short surplice, and carrying a cross on a tall staff.
Then follow the chanters, men and boys, similarly attired; then one or two
clergymen, or perhaps theological students, also in cassock and surplice;
next two little boys in red cassocks; and finally two officiating
ministers, wearing long albs. The "priest" has a green stole, crossed on
his breast, and confined at the sides by a cincture; the "deacon's" stole
is worn over the left shoulder. The clerks take their places in the stalls;
the singers proceed to their benches. The cross-bearer kneels at one side
of the altar; the "priest" kneels at the foot of the steps, with the deacon
behind him and the acolytes at his side. The service about to be performed
is not the "Order of Morning Prayer" prescribed by the prayer-book, but
simply the communion service. The officiating minister (for the sake of
convenience let us call him what he calls himself--the priest; though
without, of course, admitting his sacerdotal character) chants a short
prayer, very much in the style of the chanting we hear at mass, and the
choir respond "Amen." Then the litany is chanted antiphonally, by one of
the clergy and the choristers alternately; it is in the main a translation
of that part of our litany of the saints in which we address Almighty God
directly, without asking the intercession of his blessed. This over, the
ministers and acolytes retire in the same order in which they entered, and
the organist plays a voluntary, during which the other six altar-candles
are lighted. When the clergy return the priest is seen in a green maniple
and chasuble. The latter differs from the vestment worn by the Catholic
priest at mass only in being less stiff in texture, pointed behind, and
covering the arm nearly to the elbow; and instead of being embroidered with
a cross on the back it is marked with a figure nearly resembling the letter
Y. With hands clasped before his breast the priest now ascends the steps,
and standing before the altar, with his back to the people, goes on with
the second part of the service. We need not describe it, for it is
principally translated from the missal. The words are all repeated in a
tone which is half reading and half chanting, and whenever the minister
says "Let us Pray," or "The Lord be with you," he turns round to the people
like a priest chanting "Oremus" or "Dominus Vobiscum." The epistle and
gospel are read by the deacon. The sermon follows; a rather vague and wordy
discourse, chiefly remarkable for the frequent and affectionate use of the
term "Catholic." The preacher begins by saying "In the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," and the more devoutly disposed of
the congregation thereupon cross themselves. After the sermon comes the
most solemn part of the service, taken nearly verbatim from the canon of
the mass; and at the commencement a great many of the congregation who
apparently are not communicants, leave the church with reverential faces,
as if they supposed the old law forbidding catechumens to witness the more
sacred mysteries were still in force. But the curious spectators, who
compose a large proportion of the audience, are under no such scruple about
remaining.

{54}

We need not describe the order of the service in detail, because the words
are almost exactly those to which we are ourselves accustomed, and the
ceremonies come as close to those of the mass as it is possible to make
them come. Whenever the ministers or attendants pass before the altar they
make a low bow to the cross. As the time of consecration approaches, the
deacon goes to the corner of the altar, and the acolytes bring him there
the bread and water and wine, which he hands to the priest, the wine and
water being mixed in the chalice. The prayer of consecration (a translation
of our own) is chanted like the rest of the service, until the priest
reaches the words, "This is my body," etc., "This is my blood," etc.;
those, suddenly dropping his voice, he repeats in a low voice, bending
over, and immediately afterward lifting up the elements on high. The
attendants, during this ceremony, hold up the corners of his vestment.
After the consecration all make genuflections, instead of bows, when they
have occasion to pass before the altar.

After receiving communion himself, the priest administers it to the deacon
and clergy and the altar boys. The people then approach the railing and the
priest gives them the consecrated wafer, using the formula prescribed in
the Catholic and the Protestant Episcopal liturgies alike--"The body of our
Lord Jesus Christ," etc.; but with each morsel of bread before he gives it
he makes the sign of the cross, which is a striking innovation in the
Protestant service. The deacon follows with the chalice. Before the
communion, however, a general confession is recited, and then the priest,
turning toward the people with great solemnity, repeats the form of
absolution, making the sign of the cross as he does so with outstretched
arm. After communion the celebrant scrapes the crumbs from the paten into
the chalice, and takes the ablutions at the corner of the altar exactly as
the priest does at mass. And when the congregation is dismissed at the
close, it is with a blessing and the sign of the cross, just as we are
dismissed after the _Ite, Missa est_ at the end of the mass.

On specially solemn occasions incense is used at St. Alban's, and various
other ceremonies are performed which have been borrowed from the Catholic
ritual. For example, candles are placed about the corpse when the burial
service is read.

We have described a service at St. Alban's, because that is the church in
which the ritualistic ideas, as they are called, are carried out to the
fullest development they have thus far attained in the United States. But
the rector and congregation of St. Alban's are by no means the only persons
of the Protestant Episcopal denomination who entertain those ideas. They
are only a little more advanced in their views than the majority of the
High Church Episcopal party. There are many places in New York where Sunday
services are conducted more or less in conformity with the practices of the
ritualists; and antiphonal chanting and other popish abominations have been
introduced, even into sober old Trinity Church itself. The number of those
who believe that divine service ought to be conducted with a more elaborate
ceremonial than any Protestant sect has thus far admitted is rapidly
increasing, and among them are many of the most distinguished and
influential of the Episcopal clergy.

But if so many strange things are done in our own country, they are nothing
to the innovations which are rapidly gaining ground in the Church of
England. The ritualistic movement in Great Britain is not so much the
struggle of an enthusiastic party for change or reform as it is the
spontaneous working of a logical doctrinal development which is gradually
spreading throughout the community. There is a struggle attending it; but
it is the struggle of the let-alone party for its repression, not of the
apostles of ritualism for its extension. And in spite, perhaps partly in
consequence, of the bitterness of the opposition, the number of churches in
which the good old Catholic ceremonies are revived in their ancient
splendor is, daily augmenting, and the zeal of the congregations is
increasing.
{55}
Ritualism in England is not what Punch is so fond of representing it--a
mere system of ecclesiastical millinery, born of the sick brains of foolish
and fanciful young curates; but it is a genuine expression of the sentiment
of a respectable minority of the Protestant laity. The numerous
prayer-books and similar works, prepared for the use of laymen under
ritualistic inspiration, are sold by _millions_ of copies. One
entitled "The Churchman's Guide to Faith and Piety," contains formulas for
morning and evening prayer, with an examination of conscience; devotions
for saints' days; instructions for systematic sacramental confession, and
for devoutly receiving the holy Eucharist and assisting at the sacred
mysteries; and _prayers for the faithful departed_. The real presence
and the sacrificial character of the holy Eucharist are expressed in the
clearest possible manner. There are several hand-books of devotion toward
the blessed sacrament, and manuals of religious exercises in honor of
certain particular manifestations of the divine goodness, such, for
instance, as the passion of our Saviour. A collection of "Hymns, Ancient
and Modern," of which it was stated some time ago that over one and a half
millions of copies had been sold, contains simply the principal hymns of
the Breviary, and in a work entitled "An Appendix to the Hymnal Noted," the
advanced Puseyite will find complete directions for using those hymns in
public worship, according to the rubrics of the Breviary. An English
publisher has just announced a new manual containing "the offices of prime
and compline and the vigils for the dead; the forms of blessing and
sprinkling holy water; the _Missa in nocte Nativitatis Domini_; the
Lenten litanies; the blessing of the ashes and the palm branches; the
washing of the altars and the _Maundy_; the benediction of the fonts
on Holy Saturday, and the like: translated from the Latin, with an
introduction and explanatory notes, and illustrated with extracts from the
consuetudinary of the church of Sarnm and the plain-song of the Mechlin
office-books."

"Matins" and "vespers" are chanted in many of the English churches by
choristers robed in surplices and ranged on each side of the chancel. The
Gregorian tones are used to a great extent. The officiating clergyman wears
a cope on festival days, and it has been the custom until lately to incense
the altar during the chanting of the _Magnificat_. The most complete
return, however, to the practice of the ancient church is seen in the
celebration of the Eucharist. All the Catholic vestments--the amice, alb,
cincture, maniple, stole, and chasuble--have been restored. The regulations
of the rubrics respecting different colors for different days and seasons
are followed. Sometimes the celebrant is attended by a deacon and a
subdeacon, acolytes, and censer bearers; and the use of candles on the
altar is very common. Even in churches where candles, incense, and colored
vestments are unknown, the Introit, taken from the Roman missal or the
missal of Salisbury, is frequently chanted at the beginning of the service,
and it is a very common practice to add to the regular liturgy contained in
the Book of Common Prayer various prayers taken from the ordinary and the
canon of the mass. For example, the minister often prefixes to the service
the psalm _Judica me, Deus_ with the antiphon, the _Confiteor_,
etc., which we hear every day at mass. So, too, when the celebrant is
placing the bread and wine on the altar, he borrows our offertory and the
prayers which follow it, his own liturgy not having furnished him with
anything appropriate to the occasion. The Anglican office sets down no
prayers for the priest's own communion; he, therefore, supplies the
omission by reciting in a low voice the _unde et memores_ of the
missal.

{56}

The use of crucifixes and images, and especially the image of the blessed
virgin, holding her divine Son in her arms, is by no means uncommon among
the more advanced ritualists; and some clergymen are in the habit of
blessing objects of devotion, such as medals and crosses, and even of
blessing holy water. A correspondent of a London newspaper writes a letter
of indignant complaint about the Christmas celebrations this season, at
some of the "advanced" churches, in one of which he declares that
"numberless tapers shed their halo of glory upon a veritable
_Bambino_," or figure of the infant Saviour lying in the manger. An
Anglican Missal has been published at Oxford, containing the order of the
Communion service, without any other part of the Liturgy. This service is
commonly spoken of as the "mass," and we even hear of "high mass," and "low
mass," to say nothing of matins and vespers. A few weeks ago we read an
account in an English paper of a nuptial mass in one of the ritualistic
churches. The faithful address their ministers as Father John, Father
Peter, or whatever the Christian name may be, and talk of their
"confessors" and "spiritual directors" with all the composure of genuine
Catholics.

The following description of a service at St. Alban's in London in holy
week, is taken from an English newspaper:

  The altar on Maundy Thursday was vested in white and the holy Eucharist
  was solemnly celebrated at 7 A.M. when many of the members of a
  confraternity attached to the church communicated. After the morning
  service the altar was entirely stripped of all its vestings and ornaments
  except the candlesticks, and so remained until Easter eve. On Good
  Friday, there was a meditation at 8 A.M., which was well attended. The
  church was full at 10.30, when matins and the ante-communion office were
  said. The sermon was followed by the chanting of the Reproaches, and the
  hymn _Pange Lingua_. At 2 P.M., after the singing of the litany, the
  Rev. A. H. Mackonochie preached the three hours' agony, the order of
  which was as follows: (1.) One of the words of our Lord on the cross, was
  chanted by the choir; (2.) A short sermon on the word was next
  pronounced; (3.) All knelt in silent meditation, the organ playing
  softly; (4.) A hymn was sung. This order was observed for each of the
  words on the cross, the whole service lasting three hours and a half. At
  3 o'clock, the hour of our Lord's death, the bell was tolled for five
  minutes, while all knelt in silence. Even-song, or vespers, took place at
  7 P.M. The sermon was followed by the chanting of the _Stabat Mater_
  and _Miserere_. A meditation on the taking down from the cross
  closed the evening. All through the day the bell was tolled solemnly, and
  most of the congregation appeared in mourning. On Easter eve there was
  service at 9 P.M. The church was elaborately decorated for the coming
  festival with white and scarlet hangings, hot-house flowers, and candles.
  The service opened with a procession, the chanters singing the old Easter
  hymn _O filii et filiae_, and three of the attendants carrying
  banners. Then vespers were chanted, and after the reading of the second
  lesson the sacrament of baptism was administered to twenty-eight persons.
  On Easter Sunday the Eucharist was celebrated at 7, 8, and 9 A.M.; at
  10.30, matins were sung; and at 11.15 there was a grand Easter service
  which we suppose the high and dry "Anglo-Catholics" would call high mass.
  The ministers and attendants, with lights and banners, entered in
  procession, while the choristers chanted the hymn _Ad Caenam Agni_.
  As soon as they reached the altar, the Introit was sung, and the "mass"
  or communion service, was then celebrated in the usual manner, another
  breviary hymn, the _victimae Paschali_, being chanted at the
  offertory.

In an account of the holy week services at St. Philip's, Clerkenwell, we
read that on Palm Sunday the altar was vested in black, the cross veiled
with crape, and the retable strewn with palm branches.
{57}
The choir, bearing palms, entered the church, singing the hymn "Ride on,
etc.," preceded by the processional cross which was also veiled with crape.
At a church in the diocese of Manchester recently, the services for Good
Friday began at midnight, with a litany and sermon. At 6 A. M. there was a
litany again, with a second sermon. At 9 A. M. followed matins and a
sermon; at noon a special service and sermon; at 3 P. M. litany and sermon;
at 6, evensong, and sermon, at 9, litany, sermon and benediction. The
Church Times, a ritualist periodical, remarked that it was "cheering to
find the Catholic view of the observance of the great fast so admirably
developed in a diocese so terribly over-ridden by Puritanism."

Some of our readers may remember the circumstances attending the funeral of
the Rev. John Mason Neale at East Grinstead, England, in August 1866. Dr.
Neale was well known as the author of some admirable translations of
Breviary hymns, as one of the most earnest apostles of ritualism, and as
the founder of a convent of women. The burial ceremonies, in the chapel of
Sackville College, included what might be called a high mass of requiem,
with priest, deacon, and sub-deacon, habited in magnificent vestments of
black silk trimmed with silver; an assistant priest; and a master of
ceremonies, or _ceremoniarius_. The service commenced with the introit
"Grant them eternal rest, O Lord." After the epistle the _Dies Irae_
was chanted in Grergorian melody, as the gradual. When choir and
congregation assembled after communion in the college quadrangle, there to
form themselves into a procession, one of the clergy repeated the prayer,
_Deus, qui nobis sub sacramento mirabili_, which is always chanted in
the Catholic church at the benediction of the blessed Sacrament. In the
procession, besides clerks, chanters, acolytes, and cross-bearer, appeared
the "sisters of the third order;" novices; "sisters of the second order" in
white veils edged with blue; "professed sisters;" the mother superior,
assistant mother, and mistress of novices of Dr. Neale's convent; superiors
of other orders; "brothers associate;" etc. The corpse "was vested in
cassock, surplice, and black stole; a crucifix was in his crossed hands,
the same one which he was in the habit of having before him when hearing
confessions." In an appendix to a virulent little treatise against
ritualism by the Rev. Robert Vaughan, D.D., [Footnote 8] there are
descriptions of services in several of the advanced churches; and the
author says: "This is the course of things in a large number of our city
and suburban churches over the kingdom; and not a few churches in our
smaller towns, and even in our villages, do their best, as before
intimated, toward imitating the example set them by their more fashionable
and wealthy neighbors. The editor of The Church Times filled some thirty
columns of that journal with such reports as we have cited, relating to the
celebrations of last Easter, and stated that the accounts he had published
were 'only a small selection from the overwhelming mass' which had reached
him," Proof enough that the movement, as we said before, is very widely
extended and essentially popular.

    [Footnote 8: Ritualism in the English Church in its Relation to
    Scripture, Piety, and Law. By Robert Vaughan, D.D. 12mo. London: 1866.]

Everybody remembers the commotion raised a year or two ago by an
enthusiastic gentleman named Lyne who called himself "Brother Ignatius,"
and made a very foolish and unfortunate attempt to establish a Protestant
order of Benedictines in England. But other efforts to introduce religious
communities into the Church of England have been more prosperous, and there
are now at least 400 or 500 members of various sisterhoods, who take vows,
some for life, some for three years. [Footnote 9]

    [Footnote 9: Sisterhood have obtained a precarious footing in the
    United States. There is one in New York, whose members wear a costume
    suggested somewhat of the cloister and somewhat of the mantua-maker's
    shop. They have neat little things, between caps and veils, on their
    heads; make-believe rosaries hanging from their girdles; and black
    bombazine gown's distended to fashionable dimensions by means of
    hoop-skirts.]

{58}

In all cases there is a novitiate of one or two years, and it is said that
women who take the vows almost always adhere to them. Brotherhoods are not
at all flourishing, but there is a loud call for them among the ritualists,
and we see no reason to doubt that they will soon follow in the general
progress of the Catholic revival. Of the number of congregations in which
ritualistic practices are followed, we have no exact account; but a
disinterested authority in which we have confidence estimates the number of
the clergy who entertain the advanced views at about 2000. Among them are a
few of the bishops, the most prominent being Dr. Wilberforce, bishop of
Oxford, and Dr. Hamilton, bishop of Salisbury. Indeed, the rapid progress
of the new ideas seems to have thrown the thorough-going Protestants into a
fever of alarm. Courses of lectures are got up to counteract the growing
spirit, and monster petitions and memorials are presented to the bishops by
the clergy and people of their dioceses. A remonstrance with five hundred
signatures has been laid before the Bishop of Salisbury; a memorial with
two thousand and three hundred names has been presented to the Bishop of
Gloucester; and four hundred and twenty-three of the clergy of London have
united in a protest. Colored vestments are worn in twelve of the London
churches, incense is used in six, and colored stoles have been introduced
in three, which have not yet adopted the full "Eucharistic vestments."

Not very long ago a grand exhibition of ecclesiastical ornaments and
vestments from churches of the establishment in  various parts of the
kingdom was held at Norwich. Eucharistic (that is, colored) vestments were
contributed by a hundred churches, and it was estimated that there were two
hundred and fifty or three hundred other churches in which they were
habitually used. The number is probably now larger. Many of these vestments
were of extraordinary richness. There were silks and velvets covered with
delicate and elaborate embroideries, and bedecked with a literal profusion
of diamonds, pearls, and various precious stones. One chasuble, not
jeweled, was valued at £220, Or $1,100. There were crosiers, mitres,
stoles, and superb crimson copes--all in use at the present day--not to
speak of numerous relics of antiquity, even relics of the saints and the
twelve apostles, and a fragment of the true cross.

The confessional in the Anglican Church is not an innovation by any means;
but under the protecting wings of ritualism it is assuming much greater
prominence than it has ever enjoyed before. In St. Alban's, New-York, you
will not find a confessional box; but you may make a confession there, if
you feel so disposed, and the reverend pastor is ready to absolve penitents
with the usual formularies. At St. Alban's in London, however, they do
things in a much more complete style, with a box and a grating, and all the
other Catholic accessories--with the trifling exceptions of sacerdotal
character and jurisdiction on the part of the confessor. An Anglican
minister of Protestant proclivities, named Ormiston, recently made an
experimental visit of investigation to the Rev. Mr. Mackonochie's
confessional at St. Alban's, and at a meeting of the National Protestants
Institute on the 28th of January last, was cruel enough to tell all that
happened there. He went on one of the days set apart for receiving the
confessions of men, took his turn with a number of others who were waiting,
and in course of time found himself in the confessional box, peering
through a hole at the Rev. Mr. Mackonochie, who was vested in a surplice
and purple stole. Mr. Ormiston stated that he wished to make a "special"
confession, and was thereupon requested to kneel. He could not bring
himself to do this, but he made believe do it--probably he squatted--and
then proceeded to his unbosoming. The Rev. Mr. Mackonochie must have been
rather unpleasantly amazed by what followed.
{59}
Pulling out a written paper Mr. Ormiston read, in a loud tone so as to be
heard by the people outside, this humble confession of sins: "I have but
too imperfectly discharged my solemn ordination vow of being ready with all
faithful diligence to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange
doctrines contrary to God's word,' and _especially the damnable doctrine
now maintained by those priests in the Church of England, commonly called
'Puseyites,' together with their popish practices_, whereby they are
seeking to dethrone the blessed gospel of God's free grace, and to set up
in its stead the 'burning lies' of anti-christ." He asked for absolution,
but Mr. Mackonochie could not be persuaded of his penitence (though the
sinner vowed that he never was more sorry in his life), and refused to give
it. So Mr. Ormiston handed his card to the confessor, and came away, "bowed
down and crushed," as he said, "with a sense of the evil which this awful
system is working."

The question of the legality of the ritualistic innovations, or, to speak
more accurately, of these restorations of ancient practice, has been before
the law courts and the houses of convocation, but thus far without decided
result. The Church Union in England, have published the opinions of nine
eminent lawyers to whom the matter was referred, including Sir R.
Phillimore, Sir Fitzroy Kelly, Sir W. Bovill, and Mr. Coleridge, all of
whom are in favor of the legality of the "Eucharistic vestments," six in
favor of two lights on the altar during the communion service, four in
favor of wafer bread, and all more or less against the incensing of
"persons or things." A committee of the lower house of convocation made a
report on these subjects, which was presented to the upper house last June;
and in view of the position taken by the authors of this report, and of the
legal opinions above referred to, as well as the opposition of Dr. Tait,
bishop of London, to the practices therein condemned, the rector of St.
Alban's, Holborn, has felt himself compelled to discontinue, under protest,
the objectionable manner of using incense, and the elevation of the bread
and wine at the consecration. In an address to his congregation on the
feast of the Epiphany, be declares his persuasion that the house of
convocation is wrong, but he thinks it better to yield. "I must tell you,"
he adds, "for your own satisfaction, that the less obtrusive elevation
indicated in the words of the prayer-book, 'here the priest is to take the
paten into his hand,' and 'here he is to take the cup into his hand,' is
quite sufficient for the ritual purpose, that, namely, of making the
oblation of the holy sacrifice to God. The use of incense will now be
discontinued at the beginning of the service, at the gospel, and at the
offertory. Before the consecration prayer the censer will be brought in. At
the consecration, incense will be put into it by the thurifer, but it will
not be used, as at present, 'for censing persons and things.' This is a
mode of using incense allowed by the ecclesiastical opinion, and not
disallowed by the legal one."

Some time ago a number of prominent clergymen and laymen of the American
Episcopal Church, addressed a letter to Bishop Hopkins of Vermont, asking
his opinion "whether an increase of ritualism would be advisable," or
whether it was best to be satisfied with "the ordinary average of present
parochial practice"? The reply of Bishop Hopkins is contained in a little
volume published last year.[Footnote 10] It is an elaborate defence of the
lawfulness and reasonableness of the ritualistic practices, though it
deprecates any authoritative infringement on the liberty which the
Episcopal body has heretofore exercised in such matters.
{60}
"I incline to regard it as most probable," the bishop says, "that this
ritualism will grow into favor by degrees until it becomes the prevailing
system. The old, the fixed, and the fearful, will resist it. But the young,
the ardent, and the impressible will follow it more and more. The spirit of
the age will favor it because it is an age of excitement and sensation. The
lovers of 'glory and of beauty' will favor it, because it appeals with far
more effect to the natural tastes and feelings of humanity. The rising
generation of the clergy will favor it, because it adds so much to the
solemn character of their office and the interest of their service in the
house of God." And as for the effect of the movement upon the low
churchmen, he believes that it will only become a more marked distinction
between parties which have long existed, and which might well be allowed to
appear in a more decided form without danger to the peace and prosperity of
the denomination.

    [Footnote 10: The Law of Ritualism. By the Rt. Rev. John Henry Hopkins,
    D.D., LL. D., Bishop of Vermont. New York: Hurd & Houghton.]

As might be supposed, Bishop Hopkins says a great many sensible things
about ritualism in general, though their application to the particular case
before him is not always of the clearest. The ceremonial part of divine
worship is not, he declares, a matter of indifference. God gave the most
explicit instructions for the performance of public worship under the
Levitical law. He described the tabernacle that was to be erected in the
wilderness and the temple of Solomon which succeeded it, giving minute
directions for the fashioning of all their parts; for the incense, the
golden censers, the candlesticks, and the rich priestly vestments that were
to be used when the descendants of Aaron approached his presence. And under
the new dispensation this beautiful and elaborate system, so often
pronounced by Almighty God "an ordinance for ever," was not swept wholly
out of existence, though certain parts of it passed away into a higher and
more extensive form of divine arrangement. The animal sacrifices ceased,
because they were only types of the great sacrifice which the cross of
Christ fulfilled. The restriction of the priesthood to the family of Aaron
was abolished, because the new covenant was not restricted to a single
nation, like the old, but was made with all the peoples of the earth. The
rest of the Mosaic law, Dr. Hopkins argues, remained in force. His argument
is not a good one, for it would lead him to absurdities. If the old ritual
was not abolished, why do modern Christians not observe it? What authority
have they for omitting all the more onerous parts of the ceremonial, and
retaining only the rich garments and lights and fragrant incense, which
please the senses without imposing any particular burden? If ritualism had
no better argument in its favor than the book of Leviticus, there would be
little to say in its defence. Dr. Vaughan, who reasons that ritualism is
unlawful in the Christian church, because there is no book of rites in the
New Testament corresponding to the book of Leviticus in the old, is as
logical as Dr. Hopkins. The Bishop of Vermont, however, is apparently
sensible that there must be some authoritative enactment on the subject;
that God, either by his church or by some other inspired mouthpiece, must
have abolished or modified the Jewish ritual, and substituted a new one, or
else we ought still to observe the full Mosaic ceremonial, on the principle
that laws are binding until they are repealed. To us, Catholics, the case
is clear enough. We have the authority of the church of God for all we do;
she abolished the old Jewish rites, and she ordained the Christian
ceremonial. And Dr. Hopkins is sensible enough of the importance of this
authorization, for he tries to apply it to his own denomination, and
thereby, of course, admits that the church has uniformly followed the
rightful practice, and that the Protestant sects have been all wrong.
{61}
He shows, from the writings of the early fathers and from other ancient
documents, that the term "altar" was constantly used in primitive times in
connection with the celebration of divine services; that the altars were
both of wood and or stone, and that hence there is no reason for the
restriction which many Protestants would lay upon the Lord's Table; that it
should be "an honest table, with legs to it;" and that candles and incense
were habitually used at the celebration of the divine mysteries. A much
more important matter, Bishop Hopkins says, is the use of oil or chrism in
confirmation; and this, he admits, "is plainly stated by Tertullian to have
been the established practice in the year 200." And he quotes a remarkable
passage from Bingham's" Antiquities of the Christian Church" (a Protestant
work), to the effect that "it was this unction at the completion of baptism
to which they [the early Christians] ascribed the power of making every
Christian, in some sense, partaker of a royal priesthood, which is not only
said by Origen, but by Pope Leo, St. Jerome, and many others." His remarks
on the subject of sacerdotal vestments are not less striking. He mentions
the proofs brought forward by Baronius, that St. James the Just, first
bishop of Jerusalem, and St. John the Evangelist "wore the golden ornament
which was prescribed for the mitre of the high priest in the Mosaic
ritual." He refers to Constantine's gift of "a rich vestment, embroidered
with gold," to Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem, to be worn by him in the
celebration of the sacred offices. He cites ancient decrees concerning the
_orarium_, or stole, and the different manner in which it was to be
worn by priests and by deacons; mentions the ring and staff prescribed for
a bishop; and especially refers to the fact that black, as the symbol of
sin and mourning, was everywhere excluded. Bishop Hopkins brings forward
these things by way of showing the multitude of points of conformity
between the early Christian and the ancient Jewish ritual; but they do not
seem to have awakened in his mind the question, "Which, then, is the true
Christian church?" nor does he perceive that, however strongly they may
support the Catholic practice, they do little good to the Episcopalians.
The first Church of England men understood the propriety of ritualistic
magnificence a great deal better than their descendants do. When they cast
off faith and obedience they did not at the same time cast off the rich
priestly robes, nor put out the altar lights, nor stop the swinging of
censers and chanting of psalms. The ritual of the primitive Protestants was
hardly less gorgeous than that of mother church herself. When Archbishop
Parker was consecrated in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, he wore "a long
scarlet gown and a hood, with four torches carried before him: Bishop
Barlow had a silk cope, being to administer the sacrament; four
arch-deacons, who attended him, wearing silk copes also." And a puritanical
Protestant, Thomas Sampson, complained to Peter Martyr in 1550 that the
ministry of Christ was banished from the English court, because the image
of the crucifix was allowed there, with lights burning before it. Dr.
Hopkins is at pains to show that the custom and unrepealed law of the
Church of England justify the use of a processional cross, two lights on
the altar, incense, surplice, alb, girdle, stole, dalmatic, tunicle,
chasuble, cope, amice, cape or tippet, maniple, hood, and cassock; that the
use of oil in confirmation and extreme unction, and of _prayers for the
dead_, which are found in the first Prayer-book of Edward VI., though
they were subsequently omitted from the liturgy, has never been prohibited
and is still lawful. We suspect that to many Protestants this statement
will be a little startling.

It will not be more startling, however, than a view of what the liturgy of
the Church of England was in the first years of her heresy, and what,
according to the ritualistic party, it ought rightly to be now.
{62}
It seems to be generally admitted that what is known as the first
Prayer-book of Edward VI., published in 1549, is the standard to which the
ceremonial of the Establishment ought to be referred; that whatever was
sanctioned or permitted under the rubrics of that work may be lawfully used
or done now; and that the subsequent revisions of the Prayer-book, inasmuch
as they have authoritatively condemned none of the ancient forms and
expressions of doctrine embodied in that earlier ritual, have no
restrictive force upon the liberty of the modern revivers of old Catholic
practices. Let us see, then, what the first Prayer-book of Edward. VI. was,
in its order of the communion service, the present battle-ground of
ritualism.

This portion of the liturgy was entitled, "The Supper of the Lord and the
Holy Communion, commonly called the Mass." It is divided into "the
Ordinary," and "the Canon." The first part begins with the Lord's Prayer;
and then follow the Collect for purity, the Introit (now omitted), the
_Kyrie Eleison_, the _Gloria in Excelsis, Dominus Vobiscum_,
Collects for the day and for the king, the Epistle, Gospel, and Nicene
Creed, the sermon, Exhortation, Offertory, and Oblation; _Dominus
Vobiscum, Sursum Corda_, the Preface, and the _Sanctus_. The canon
now consists of one long prayer of consecration, but in the Prayer-book of
1549 it comprised many other parts copied pretty closely from the missal;
and the confession and absolution, which are now transferred to an early
part of the ordinary, came in their proper place immediately before the
communion. After communion were the _Agnus Dei_ and Post-Communion,
the Collects, and other prayers and ceremonies, very much as we have them
in the mass. The rubric of 1549 says: "When the clerks have done singing
the _Sanctus_, then shall the priest or deacon turn himself to the
people and say, 'Let us pray for the whole state of Christ's church;'" to
which the present office adds the words, "militant here on earth." An able
paper in a collection of essays by advanced ritualists, published in London
last year, [Footnote 11] argues from this that prayers for the dead
formerly had place and are still allowable in the English liturgy. If this
be not so, the author says, "we shall find ourselves placed in a dilemma
which to a Catholic mind is inexpressibly painful. For.... it follows that
the liturgy of the English Church is the only living liturgy, the only
known extant liturgy which is wanting in remembrance of its faithful
departed. From which dilemma we may devoutly say, Good Lord, deliver us."

    [Footnote 11: The Church and the World: Essays on Questions of the Day.
    By various writers. First series. Edited by the Rev. Orby Shipley, M.
    A. Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyre. 1866.]

In the consecration prayers there is an important part found in the book Of
1549, but now left out, of which the same writer says: "We can scarcely too
deeply deplore the loss, or earnestly desire that it may be restored to
us." This is the invocation of the Holy Ghost, and it reads as follows:
"Hear us, O merciful Father, we beseech thee, and with thy holy spirit and
word vouchsafe to bl+ess and sanc+tify these thy gifts and creatures of
bread and wine, that they may be to us the body and blood of thy most
dearly beloved son Jesus Christ." Here we have not only an authorization
but an explicit direction for the use of the sign of the cross, at which
many good Episcopalians shudder nervously as at a diabolical popish
invention. It was left out of the later Prayer-books, but never prohibited.

Before the communion there is a formula of invitation which the minister is
to read to the people, bidding them to the Lord's table. In the present
Prayer-book it contains nothing which calls for special remark; but in that
of 1549 it embraced the following passage: "And if there be any of you
whose conscience is troubled and grieved in anything, lacking comfort or
counsel, let him come to me, or to some other discreet and learned priest,
taught in the law of God, and confess and open his sin and grief secretly
.... _that of us he may receive comfort and absolution_," etc.

{63}

The writer of the essay above quoted favors not only a return to the old
Edwardian liturgy, but a revival of various other usages to which we need
not more particularly refer than by saying that they all have a genuine
Catholic flavor. He sees no reason, apart from prejudice, why Anglicans
should not call their communion service by "the old English word 'Mass;"
and he deprecates the Protestant custom of consuming at once all the bread
and wine which are blessed for the Lord's Supper, without reserving any for
the visitation of the sick. "Those who minister among the lowest poor in
missionary work," he says, "can bear witness how distressing oftentimes are
celebrations in the crowded and sick rooms of a town population." And he
quotes an instance in which the Eucharist had to be consecrated for a dying
man who occupied one corner of a crowded room tenanted by several other
families. In another corner crouched a woman of the vilest class, and
during the consecration unclean insects were crawling over the "fair white
linen cloth" upon which the elements were laid. Can we wonder that to a
minister who believes in the Real Presence, and in his own power to
consecrate, a celebration such as this must seem like profanation?

If there were nothing in this ritualistic revival but an attempt to borrow
the rich robes of faith and dress up in them the shrunken form of heresy,
it would hardly be worth our attention. It is little to us whether the
human laws of the realm of England permit the ministers of the Established
Church to stand with their backs to the congregation or not; whether they
may legally burn candles in daylight, or swing censers, or chant their
prayers instead of saying them, or wear colored and embroidered vestments
instead of the plain surplice and the black gown. Since they have taken the
liberty to discard faith and obedience, one would think it of little matter
that they should discard ceremonies also. After they have lost the
substance, why should they care for the form? If they could abolish, for
instance, the celibacy of the clergy, they had surely as good a right to
abolish a red or green chasuble. Indeed, to be logical, they ought to
ordain, alter, and abolish just what they please. But it is impossible not
to see that there is a great deal more in this movement than a mere
striving after beautiful and impressive forms. There is first a reawakening
of the Catholic idea of public worship, and a rejection of the common
Protestant theory. It is the Protestant principle, not always expressly
acknowledged, but practically acted upon, that the primary object of a
religious service is the edification of the people; it is the Catholic idea
that the chief purpose of that service is the worship of Almighty God. The
Englishman, Thomas Sampson, whose complaint to Peter Martyr touching lights
and crucifixes, we quoted just now, says in the same letter: "What hope is
there of any good when our friends are disposed to look for religion in
those dumb remnants of idolatry, and not in the _preaching_ of the
lively word of God?" And what is it but a recognition of this principle
which causes most of the Protestant sects to lay such stress upon sermons
as to make them the predominating feature of every service, and often gives
their public prayers such a doctrinal and exhortatory character that they
can hardly be distinguished from sermons except by the substitution of the
phrase "Almighty God" for "Beloved brethren"? Now, the ritualists, whatever
their shortcomings, are at any rate free from this absurdity.
Sermon-hearing or meditation, says one of their late writers, may be
salutary enough in its proper time and place, but it is not worship. Here,
no doubt, is a great advance in the right direction.
But this is not all.
{64}
An essay "On the Eucharistic Sacrifice" in The Church and the World gives
the Catholic doctrine still more explicitly, and acknowledges "that
Christian worship is really the earthly exhibition of Christ's perpetual
intercession as the sole high priest of his church, the sole acceptable
presenter of the one worship of his one body in heaven and in earth, and
that as such it culminates in his own mysterious presence, in and by the
sacrament of his most precious body and blood."

In this recognition of the true functions of the Christian ministry, the
true character of the worship which ought to be offered in God's holy
temple, we may suppose the ritualists to be pretty well agreed. But
doctrinally, they may be divided into two classes. With the one class, a
gorgeous ritual is merely the gratification of an aesthetic or antiquarian
taste; with the other it is the logical development of an advance in
doctrine. The one class would bring back the practice of the Anglican
Church to what it used to be in old days; the other would imitate the rites
and ceremonies which were followed in the Catholic Church ages before
Anglicanism was heard of.

The second class is, we believe, the more numerous, as it certainly is by
far the more important of the two. Its views are set forth with frankness
and decided ability in the volume which we have already quoted; and we are
certain that no one can read these essays without feeling that the
ritualists are legitimate successors of the tractarians of thirty years
ago, and that there is promise of as much good from the agitation which
they are leading as came from the great movement of Dr. Newman and Dr.
Pusey. "Ritualism," says one of the essayists, "is not employed as a
side-wind, by which to bring in certain tenets surreptitiously, but as the
natural complement of those tenets after they have been long and sedulously
inculcated." The burning of candles and incense is of very little moment,
considered as a mere form, but it is of great moment when it is done as the
ritualists do it for the sake of rendering honor to the real presence of
our Lord. It is of no consequence what order of words or what gestures or
what dress the Anglican minister uses in reading the communion office,
because he has not the priestly character, and if he followed literally the
missal itself, he could not celebrate a valid mass. But if he comes as
close to the missal as he can, by way of testifying that he believes in the
doctrines stated and symbolized in the missal; if he imitates the
ceremonies of the daily Christian sacrifice, in order to show his belief in
the sacrificial character of the Eucharist, that fact becomes of serious
importance, and indicates a genuine progress toward truth, at which every
good Catholic ought to rejoice. The practice of auricular confession is not
new in the Anglican Church; but it acquires additional significance when it
is spoken of, as it is in the Church and the Word, by the name of "the
sacrament of penance," for the Church of England recognizes no sacraments
except baptism and the supper of the Lord.

If there is any name which a genuine ritualist really hates it is that of
Protestant. The avowed purpose of the advanced school is to unprotestantize
the Church of England; and the writer just quoted speaks of having found
comfort at a time of spiritual doubt and trial, in the belief that the
English Church was still a part of the Catholic Church, "unless she sinned
sufficiently at the reformation to justify Rome in cutting her off." "Our
place is appointed us," says the same essayist, "among Protestants and in a
communion deeply tainted in its practical system by Protestant heresy; but
our duty is the expulsion of the evil, and not flight from it, any more
than it is a duty for those to leave the Roman Church who become conscious
also of abuses within her system." The Church of England indeed, has but a
weak hold upon the faith or affection of the ritualists of this school.
{65}
We find the XXXIX. Articles spoken of as "those Protestant articles
tacked on to a Catholic liturgy, those forty stripes save one, as some have
called them,

laid on the back of the Anglican priesthood;" and in the same book we are
told that "the universal church, and not the Church of England, is becoming
the standard to which doctrine and practice must be conformed, and the
advantages in many respects of other divisions of it over our own are
becoming recognized." Prepared as many of these men are to accept the
doctrines of the church in every particular except the supremacy of the
Pope and the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin, and to follow her
discipline even to clerical celibacy, religious vows, and sacramental
confession, can we doubt that there is hope of their overcoming the
remaining obstacles to their conversion, and that the London Weekly
Register is right when it calls this "the most important religious crisis
that England has witnessed since the so-called Reformation."

And even in the vagaries of the other branch of ritualists, the church
milliners, if we may be allowed the expression, who imagine they are
bringing back their errant sect to the honest life of old, when they copy
the forms and ceremonies, the lights and vestures, the incense and the
chants of the primitive liturgy, without conforming to the doctrines which
these observances are intended to symbolize; who set up as their standard
of conformity not the universal church as she has been through all ages,
but the Anglican establishment as it was in its infancy, before it had
quite forgotten Catholic truth and propriety; even in the hollow ritualism
of this school, we say, there is cause for gratification. Unlike the
builders of material temples, who must work up from base to summit, these
ecclesiastical architects can sometimes construct their foundation after
the superstructure is finished. The mere copying of sacred forms is apt to
lead them to the sacred faith and spirit; and, any way, it is something
gained to know that one can bend before a crucifix without breaking the
commandments, and that frankincense is not an abomination in the sight of
the Lord.

------

    Original.

    The Cross.


  O Tree, how strong thy branches are,
  To bear such wondrous, weighty fruit!
     "_He_ strength imparts."

  Than all, thy fruit is sweeter far.
  What genial soil doth feed thy root?
     "Men's loving hearts."

------

{66}

    Translated from the French.


    Robert; Or, The Influence Of A Good Mother.

    Chapter VII.

    "To be an artist . . . .
     It is his hope, his faith, his ambition."


Genius, however great, will not make a man famous unless he works for fame.
Robert felt this and had strength, perseverance, and courage to labor, for
he was poor and of obscure name, and he knew what he could do, and was
determined to do it. But, like all who struggle through this life, he had
his depressions and his griefs, which he bore bravely; and if
discouragement ever glided into his soul, he instantly resorted to prayer,
and peace and repose would then spread their wings over him. He imposed
upon himself the strict obligation of never wasting a moment of time, and
chained himself to his work, as a galley slave is chained; accepting his
present life, mercenary and prosaic as it is, with perfect resignation and
happiness, feeling that God has made it thus, and that he must be thankful
for it. Existence was a happiness to him, for his heart was good, and duty
was to him perfect joy; and knowing he was necessary to the happiness of
Madame Gaudin, he devoted himself to her as a son. By degrees her strength
returned, and at last she was able to resume the management of the
household, which placed more time at Robert's disposition, and his mind,
rid of these cares, regains its elasticity and primitive vigor. Artistic
reveries come back, the fire of creative inspiration fills his soul, and he
stands before his canvas, on which the faint outlines of the Virgin are
traced. Then another dream seizes him, and hours and days and weeks of
patient labor are necessary to faithfully bring out his ideas, and at first
all is chaos; but slowly the canvas becomes animated, and finally Robert,
like Pygmalion, stands in ecstasy before his work. His body trembles with
enthusiasm, his eyes moisten, his knees give way under him--and why this
emotion? He has faithfully presented the scene where, between God and his
mother, his happy childhood was passed. The picture is astonishingly and
wonderfully true. Here stands out boldly the savage grandeur of Ecorcharde,
with its rugged sides and deep ravines--there the valley through which the
silver waters of the Dordogne run--the village of Bains--the church spire,
the rectory--and all the crowning glory of this mountain, its woods and
sombre verdure. There the little house where Robert had lived for twelve
years, and, at the extremity of the valley, the peak of Sauci, which
majestically crowned the whole. The memory of the young artist is faithful,
and he forgets nothing. Standing on a clearing on the mountain side is a
woman, and a child is playing near her; it is Robert and his mother. The
sun is just sinking below the horizon, and sheds upon the scene the glory
of its waves of gold and purple. Each day Robert gave many hours to this
picture, in which he relived his childhood's days; and, when completed, it
was a perfect masterpiece of grace and taste, and finished with much care.
His touch was fresh and bold--the animals that reposed in the valley were
perfect, the trees of exquisite foliage, and the lights and shades of
delicious harmony.

One morning the young painter was at work, bringing out a stronger effect
of light on his picture, when a loud knock at the door drew him from his
work. He opened it, and standing before him was his late master.

{67}

"Where have you been, my dear Robert?" asked the illustrious artist; "I
have been so uneasy about you. Tell me why you have not been in my studio
for so long a time?"

Robert, touched by this mark of interest, given with so much affability and
simplicity, replied by a recital of the painful position in which he had
been thrown by the sickness of Madame Gaudin, and told in such warm terms
of her generous conduct to him, that the artist did not know which to
admire most--the lively gratitude of the one, or beautiful devotion of the
other.

The artist grasped his hand, and, pressing it warmly, said, "You have done
your duty, and can never reproach yourself with ingratitude." Then, turning
toward the picture, he explained, "Can this be your work? It is wonderful?"
After a few moments, in which he was perfectly absorbed, he said, "Robert,
you are ignorant of your talent; you know more than I do, and must be a
great painter ere long." Then, clasping the stupefied young man in his
arms, be pressed him to his heart in a generous transport of admiration.

Madame Gaudin, who had gone out to buy provisions for the day, stopped at
the open door to ask what it could all mean; and when she understood what
they were speaking about, she felt a great joy, and exclaimed, "I knew it;
I knew he would be a great painter." Her excess of happiness made her steps
a little trembling and uncertain; and, without caring for the presence of
the stranger, she said to Robert, "God will bless thee, my boy; God will
recompense thy Christian virtues, and all the affection thou hast had for a
poor old woman like me." Then, noticing the artist, she said, "I cannot
help it; excuse me, sir, but I must embrace him, I must press him to my
heart, and then I will be content."

Robert yielded to her caresses in a manner which attested better than words
the sincerity of his attachment for the worthy woman.

The approbation and praises given his work by his master made a profound
impression on the mind of Robert.

"My dear boy," said the artist, "I will buy your picture at a good price.
Each one of us should aid others to find the road on which he has gathered
the flowers of fortune. God has blessed my work and made me rich, but I
cannot enjoy the favors of fortune alone; I must aid others, and share with
them the riches that God has loaned me. My purse, my credit, my protection
are yours to-day, and I want you to use them without hesitation, for I
cherish you as a pupil and love you as a friend. When I pay the debt of
life, I hope to endow a great painter. Work, then, my boy; work for glory;
you are now on the road to fame, and it will lead you to fortune." Before
leaving he put in Madame Gaudin's hand a well-filled purse, and said, "Keep
silence; say nothing of this to Robert."

Robert had another joy on this eventful day. Toward night he was going on
an errand for Madame Gaudin, and near the Pont Neuf, by the Place Dauphine,
he heard the voice of a man uttering a kind of lament for Napoleon. The
voice was loud and strong, and in its modulations there was so much sorrow
that he hastened toward the man, to see if his features verified a
suspicion that came across his mind. He knew he had seen this man before.
He was a street singer; and the longer he listened to him, the more
convinced was he in his belief. Soon his eyes were fixed on a large wound
in his forehead, and, no longer doubting, he called out, "O Cyprien! my
good Cyprien!" at the same time holding out his hand.

"Pardon--excuse me--I do not know you."

"But are you not Cyprien Hardy, ex-grenadier of the Imperial Guards?" said
Robert.

"I am no other person; but I can't remember to have seen you before."

{68}

"I remember you," said Robert, with expression. "The little orphan that you
took before the palace at Fontainebleau and conducted to Paris, although
eight years ago, has not forgotten his protector and friend, and now wishes
to shake hands with him; you will not refuse me that pleasure surely?"

"Ah! truly no--a thousand times no--I cannot refuse. Touched there," said
he, putting his hand on his heart, "I know it is Robert who speaks to me;
my little Robert, grown to be a man. You have changed much, young man, and
so have I; but that does not matter; I have suffered cruelly. Oh my loved
emperor! if I could only go to him."

"Come with me," said Robert; "we can talk entirely as we please when alone;
come with me and I will take you to a person who knows you already, and
who, I am certain beforehand, will be glad to see you."

The idle and curious people who were standing by when this touching
recognition took place all walked off and left the place clear to our
friends.

"A thousand thunders, Mister Robert, you are no prouder now in Paris than
when we came in together, but you walk too fast for my old legs."

"Pardon me, Cyprien," said he, stopping quickly, "but I am so anxious to
get you home that I forget you may be fatigued and may need my arm. Take
it, my friend, for it is sure, like my affection for you; take it and we
can walk faster. I am afraid Madame Gaudin will be uneasy if I stay out so
long, and I do not like to give her the least uneasiness."

"Oh!" said the soldier, stretching up, for he was bent more by grief than
years, "you are a worthy young man, and not proud at all. You do not blush
to give your arm to a brigand of the Loire; for that is what we poor
soldiers who regret our emperor are called. But tell me, who is this Madame
Gaudin--what in the deuce do you call her?"

"Gaudin, my good Cyprien."

"Gaudin! Oh! well, I suppose she is some particular person, is she?"

"She is a good and excellent woman, to whom I owe all that I am, and who
has made every sacrifice for me, and whom I love with all my heart."

"Ah! I understand; it is a widow that wants to catch you?"

"Oh! no, my good Cyprien," said Robert, laughing; "it is a person that you
know, the old housekeeper of the lamented Abbé Verneuil. You know the
priest who gave me so sweet a welcome when I arrived in Paris, and who
placed me at the house of Madame de Vernanges?"

"Yes, yes; it comes back to my memory now, and I took a bitter hatred
against her the day I pulled the door bell at the curé's. She looked at me
with a pair of eyes that shone like balls of fire, because I twisted my
mustache when I spoke to her. Well, what has become of the priest?"

"Alas! he is dead, and much too soon for me. Oh! it was one of my dark
days, Cyprien."

"The same as mine for my emperor. I weep for him as you weep for the curé."

"We have good reason, my friend, to remember such men, and to forget them
would be to forget ourselves."

"So you tell me, old Gaudin is living with you?"

"No, no; I should have told you I lived with the dear, good woman; for
since the death of the abbé this generous woman has provided for all my
wants, spent for me her hard savings, and in every way tried to console me
for what I had lost. Yes, my friend, this good Madame Gaudin pushed forward
my taste for drawing and painting; and I thank her from the depths of my
heart, and can say without vanity that these sacrifices have not been lost.
I am rejoiced that I can give her some happiness, and it may be that in the
turning of the wheel of fortune I may gain wealth, and all that I have and
all that I may ever have shall be hers, for she has done everything for
me."

{69}

"Certainly," said Cyprien, "and I embrace the good woman with my heart,"
mounting slowly as he said it, the four steps that led to their house.
Robert had gone in ahead of him and returned with Madame Gaudin, who
received the old soldier kindly, and feasted him as a friend, making his
lonely and bruised heart feel happier than it had for a long time. After
supper Robert asked him to tell them all that had happened him since they
last met.

"There is but one subject for me, my dear Robert," said he, "and that is my
emperor. I have so much joy and so much sorrow when I pronounce this
cherished name; I am so moved when I recall the days when fortune abandoned
him, that it is almost better for me not to revert to the subject; but,
since you wish it, I will commence. When we had seen the last of the Little
Corporal, and I found I could do nothing more for him, I commenced singing
his praises through the streets, even at the risk of being imprisoned; and
now he is dead," said he, with a melancholy air--"died on that lonely rock
where he was held a captive, and the only hope I have left is in heaven."

He looked so tired now that Robert made him go to bed, and before he was up
in the morning ran out and brought him suitable clothes, so that when he
awakened he found new ones instead of the rags he had laid on his bed. "I
want Cyprien to stay with me," said Robert, "for he has been a faithful
soldier, and I am young, and can work for us both;" but it was a difficult
matter to get his consent for this arrangement, and he had to tell him many
times that he would be so useful to him, and that he really needed him
before he would accept the offer. Finally he agreed to become an inmate of
the modest household. He mixed colors for the young painter, rendered
little services to Madame Gaudin, who did all she could to aid Robert to
make him happy. From this time God seemed to open to him the treasures of
the choicest favors, and to spread them in profusion on the head of the
young painter. Warmly recommended to the world by the great artist who had
been his master, esteemed for his excellent conduct, and justly appreciated
for his talent, which was now burning in all its lustre, he could look
forward to a happy future. His mother's prediction was being gradually
accomplished, and this aided him. Whenever he sat down to composing, he
first implored the assistance of God, with the firm belief that it would
not be refused; and it was not, for the blessed Lord crowns with benefits
those who serve him with love. Nothing gives courage like the certainty of
success; and, full of an indefatigable ardor for his art, he worked hard,
disdaining the vain pleasures of the world, and his labor was recompensed.
As he advanced in age, the love of his art consumed him the more, and in
place of the wild enthusiasm he felt at first he was filled with a deep and
serious sentiment, and wanted to study the old masters under the bright sky
of Italy. The only drawback he had ever had to his dreams of studying there
was the thought of leaving Madame Gaudin alone; but now that Cyprien was
with her, he would keep her company during his absence. He was too firmly
convinced of the old man's affection to doubt for a moment that he would
fail to fulfill any instructions he might give him; but before leaving
France he wished to visit his native mountain, and pray on the grave of his
mother. He was now twenty-one years of age, and had not forgotten the
package he was to receive when he attained his majority, and which he felt
sure contained some instructions from his well-beloved mother, which it
would he a pleasure for him to obey. After quieting his fears about Cyprien
and poor Madame Gaudin, he wiped away the tears of the good woman, embraced
her tenderly, and, after receiving Cyprien's promise to take good care of
the charge confided to his friendship, Robert set out for l'Auvergne.

{70}

    Chapter VIII.

    * * * * * *

    "She sleeps--all is silent now,
      No more heart-beats."


The most touching and beautiful affection in the world is that for parents,
for their homes, and their graves. A child who reveres his mother's memory
will keep his name free from blemish; for a good name is a precious
heritage, and the remembrance of virtues in either father or mother will
shield against bad actions like an impenetrable buckler. But, alas! a
veneration for the names of our fathers is no longer in honor among men.
Family homesteads are ruthlessly destroyed by those who forget that every
stone is sacred to some tender memory; and it seems now that cool
indifference has replaced that sweet affection which of old united parents
and children. How common a thing it is in the present day to see children
disrespectful to those who have given them birth; and to what can this
perversion of heart, which chills all natural feelings, be attributed but a
want of religious training, that sanctifying, purifying power which is
based upon God's holy will and divine commandments; and faith, hope, and
charity, the celestial virtues which ought to fill all hearts?

With Robert, advancing years had not weakened in his soul the tender
veneration be avowed for the memory of his mother and her virtues. It was
to the principles she had instilled into his mind that he was indebted for
his present prosperity and happiness, for, though genius is the inestimable
gift of God, it needs guidance and consecration; and all the pious
sentiments which were afterward developed in his soul were from the seeds
sown by that angel mother.

Robert took the road to Clermont, and could have flown the entire distance,
so eager was he to get to his old home. And again and again doubts would
fill his mind as to whether he would find the loved grave; whether pitiless
time would not in nine years, have effaced the letters which traced the
name of his mother? Clermont at last appeared in the distance, then the
village of Bains, and then he was at the door of the rectory, standing with
a beating heart to see a loved face, but the door is opened by a strange
priest, from whom he learns that the venerable curé whom he sought was
dead, but in dying he left instructions to his successor; begging that
Madame Dormeuil's grave should not be neglected, which gave Robert but
another proof of his imperishable love. After obeying the first wish of his
heart and visiting his mother's grave, he obtained the papers which
concerned him, and, opening them with emotion, read as follows:

  "My dear son: I did not wish you to know the contents of these papers
  until you were twenty-one, because it seemed to me that before this time
  you would hardly comprehend them, and I thought it best to wait until you
  had experience and maturity of judgment. You know we are rarely willing
  to take the experience of others for our instruction; believing that what
  shipwrecked them we would have been wise enough to have avoided; that we
  would have acted better, reasoned better, than those who have preceded us
  on the perilous sea called the world. The blind lead the blind, and when
  we fall we are astonished. It is so with all men. Being feeble, they
  think they are strong; being dependent, they think they are free; being
  powerless, they think they are creatures of genius. But thou, my dear
  child, wilt have more strength than those who repose in themselves the
  care of their conduct, and do not invoke God to light them with his
  divine rays. In the moment of trial they fall; it happened so to me, my
  son, when I took my own feeble reason for my guide. But, though I have no
  grave faults to reproach myself for, it is not the less true that I have
  compromised thy future, and forgotten my duties as a wife and my duties
  as a Christian, for I have not been indulgent and forgetful of injuries.
{71}
  To-day, by God's grace, I am calm. I judge myself more severely then he
  will judge me, and I feel guilty and cannot excuse myself to thy eyes, by
  my youth, inexperience, and the isolation in which I found myself, when I
  claimed the right of breaking the links which I ought to have respected
  for my son. But it was my fault, and I will have the courage to tell you
  all--to confess all my sins, and then ask for pardon. Dormeuil is not thy
  name, my child; it is mine, the name of my father, a plebeian name, but
  without blemish. Thy name is De Verceil, and thy father is the Count
  Sosthène de Verceil. At ten years of age, I lost my father; my mother
  died in giving me birth, and I was left to the charge of an aunt who was
  my only relative. This worthy woman was not rich, but an annuity left her
  by her husband and the revenue from some savings placed her above want,
  and her kind heart pitied my orphanage, and she shared everything with
  me. I owe to her five years of happiness, and oh! that it were more; her
  counsels and her tenderness would have spared me the regrets I feel at
  this hour. She had placed me in a school of great renown, wishing, she
  said, to leave me, in lieu of fortune, a good education. Notwithstanding
  my plebeian name I had a crowd of friends of rich and noble heritage, for
  youth never thinks of the differences in rank or the prerogatives of
  birth; and it was thus that I became the friend of an amiable young girl,
  Helena de Verceil. Her brother came to see her often, and, as we were
  inseparable, I was generally present at these visits. I was a simple and
  candid girl, and these traits made a profound impression on the young
  count, and when I left the school some months after Helena I continued to
  see him from time to time, at his sister's house, for she was married
  immediately after leaving school. Young, ardent, impetuous, and unused to
  any resistance, the count fell easily into the snare which was held out
  to his inexperience by an irresistible tenderness. His passion, far from
  calming, grew stronger each day, and he resolved to overcome all
  obstacles and ask to marry me, although his age and his tastes were far
  from this grave determination. With his fortune and hand, he came to beg
  my aunt's consent, and to pray that she would not defer his happiness.
  Overwhelmed with joy at so brilliant and advantageous an offer for her
  niece, she gave her consent, for in all her dreams for the daughter of
  her cherished brother she had never caressed so sweet an illusion as
  this. She accepted it with the more gratitude as she knew she had a
  mortal malady which would soon leave me alone, in the midst of the
  manifold dangers that assail youth. In taking for his wife an obscure and
  poor girl the count was alienated from all his family, and his proud and
  noble parents would not pardon this unworthy _mesalliance_. He
  could, they said, have married a woman of rank and wealth, but this
  unprofitable union to the eyes of people blinded by their titles,
  whatever may have been the qualities of heart, was nothing and worse than
  nothing. He could obtain no favor from them, after putting so dark a spot
  on their escutcheon. These humiliations and insults would have had no
  effect upon me, could I have been consoled by the tender affection of my
  aunt, who saw but too late that wealth does not give happiness; and in
  less than two years after my marriage I was called to mourn her loss. The
  love of the count was soon extinguished, and men are very apt to be
  ungrateful and cruel when they cease to love. His conduct soon proved
  that he had only formed for me an ephemeral attachment, but I loved him
  above everything, and with all the energy of my soul; and this love
  increased when I became a mother, and I dared to believe that this title
  imposed by nature, and so dear to most men, would touch the heart of my
  husband, but the paternal sentiment could not triumph over the aversion
  the count felt for her whom, in a moment of insensate passion, he had
  taken for his wife.
{72}
  For one moment a ray of joy burned in his eyes when he saw that he had an
  inheritor; it was the pride of having a son, nothing more. He soon left
  my side, and I saw no more of him, except in the rare moments he
  consecrated to thee. Carried away in a round of pleasures, stifling in
  the noise of revelry the cries of conscience, regretting his liberty,
  furious at finding himself tied to a woman who was the only obstacle to
  his ambitious desires, be wished to give the half of his fortune to get
  clear of me; he overwhelmed me with reproaches, and flew into furious
  rages about my being the cause of his misfortunes.

  "One day, after a fit of fury, in which he had treated me most cruelly,
  he said, 'I do not wish you to nourish this child any more; I am not
  going to have him raised by you!' These words struck me dumb. I had you
  in my arms, my dear Robert, and I resolved to keep you there, and fly
  with you to where he could not find me. I had laid by the sum of four
  thousand francs, which my aunt had left me, and some savings from my
  father's pension, with the jewels my husband gave me at our marriage.
  These I sold, and that, added to the rest, made ten thousand francs. I
  filled a trunk with the clothing which was absolutely necessary for us,
  leaving behind all luxuries, and all ornaments and jewels, save a
  portrait of thy father, which is in a small medallion set in pearls, and
  may aid you to recognize him. All my preparations being made, I waited
  until the servants had gone to their evening meal, and then, with a
  thousand precautions, left by a stairway which led to the vestibule. It
  was scarcely night when I came out and found a stage to take my baggage
  and myself. I did not know at first where to go, but I wanted to fly far
  from the city where I had suffered so much, and to assure myself of
  keeping my child; this was my only thought, my only desire. In thinking
  over where I should go, I remembered that my parents were originally of
  l'Auvergne, and in my childhood I had heard my father describe this part
  of France, and, above all, the baths of Mount Dore. I hesitated no
  longer, taking the road to Clermont, but filled with the most horrid
  fears. Each time the stage stopped I fancied I saw the angry figure of
  thy father, and that he jerked thee from my arms. What I suffered during
  this journey I can never express to you. A thousand terrors, shudderings,
  and anguishes of all kinds agitated me, until I feared I should lose my
  reason. If anyone looked at me, I thought they knew my secret, and was
  ready to scream with horror. The gallop of a horse made me tremble and
  think I was overtaken, and my emotion would have betrayed me had the
  passengers been interested in watching my movements. Every unknown person
  I suspected as an enemy, and the remembrance of those hours of my life is
  still so vivid that they even now fill me with horror. However, I arrived
  at Clermont without accident, and remained there long enough to inform
  myself of the chances of being able to find a small house to let, in the
  neighborhood of the baths of Mount Dore. Here the first years of thy life
  were passed, and no remarkable event has ever troubled our happy
  solitude. What I have most dreaded was that I might have to return to the
  world, but God spares me this; he will take me soon. Thou canst now judge
  of my anguish at the thought of being separated from thee, and the
  desolation of my soul, that I know will soon leave thee alone in the
  world. O my child! in this hour, when my love redoubles its strength and
  struggles against death to enjoy some moments more of thy sweet society,
  I weep bitterly at the loneliness I have made for thee. I may, perhaps,
  exaggerate my wrongs; I may have acted badly; but when the moment comes
  when I will appear before my sovereign Judge, to render an account for
  all my actions, if I reproach myself with voluntarily throwing off the
  yoke which weighed me down, I will say also, with the same frankness,
  that I rejoice to have raised thee far from the world's corruptions and
  would rather leave thee alone in life than surrounded by wicked men.
{73}
  I have tried to instil good principles into thy mind, and I know that
  thou fearest and lovest God and will cherish my memory, and the heart is
  the talisman that will preserve thee from evil. I have the firm
  conviction that thou wilt never forget the sublime teachings of religion,
  and that it will ever guide thee in the right way. Pardon me, my son, for
  having deprived thee of thy father's caresses and protection; and as I
  have need of thy indulgence, I will be indulgent to others, and efface
  all remembrance of what I have suffered, and will think only of the
  happiness thou hast given me. Then, if it pleases God that thou shouldst
  ever find thy father, tell him that I pardoned him long ago, but that I
  never forgave myself for my conduct to him. Tell him that to the last
  hour of my life I regretted I could not make him happy; and, if remorse
  should fill his heart, console him, my child, be to him an angel of
  mercy, be prodigal of thy cares and tenderness, for repentance is a
  second baptism; it is the regeneration of the soul. When thou wilt read
  the lines I now trace with trembling hand, it will be long after I have
  bid adieu to the transitory things of time. Thou wilt be a man and
  subject to passions. If thou art pure, God be blessed a thousand times;
  if thou art feeble, repent sincerely and call upon God to assist thee.
  Respect, above all things, the purity of affection. Hold out thy hand to
  help all who need encouragement and pity. A word of compassion does more
  good than severity and reproach. What can I say more, but what thou
  knowest better than I do? for I have seen little of the world, and what I
  have seen makes me regard it with horror. Flee from the wicked, from whom
  nothing can be gained and all lost. Whatever career you may choose, fill
  it with honor and credit. Happiness consists neither in feasting nor the
  brilliancy of riches; it is in the life within, in doing good and making
  others happy, and in laying up treasures in heaven. Recall often the
  sweet and peaceful joys of thy childhood, the twelve years of thy life
  which will forever be engraven in thy heart. May these simple pleasures
  inspire thee with wisdom to choose between the burning, wasting pleasures
  of a vain world, and the pure joys of retirement."

Thus finished the letter.

  "O my precious mother!" cried Robert, raising his eyes toward heaven, "if
  thou wert living, I would say to thee, with lively gratitude, 'Thou hast
  done well;' for, if I am exempt from the passions of youth, it is to thy
  tender care that I owe it; it is to thy love and thy virtues that I am
  indebted for that peace of mind which makes my whole life happy. O my
  good mother! thy memory will ever be for me a precious talisman, and thy
  least desires and wishes will be sacred orders for thy son; and I swear
  by thy revered memory to try and find my father, if the Lord will permit
  me."

To the confession of his mother were joined the register of the birth of
Robert and the marriage of Mlle. Stephanie Dormeuil with the Count Sosthène
de Verceil. Though Robert had the right to take his father's name, be did
not wish it. He preferred the more humble one of his mother, and hoped, by
his talent, to raise it above the noble one of his father; to efface its
original plebeianism under a crown of fame. This was the generous idea of a
good son, who wished to avenge the contempt his mother had received from
his noble grandparents. He had now but this desire, and determined the
maternal name should be cited among the illustrious.

After one more visit to the grave of his mother, and another to his loved
mountain, the little house, and all the place, which spoke so eloquently of
her, he set out for the classic land of Italy, the cradle of the arts and
sciences.

{74}

    Chapter IX.

    "A man may lose in a moment
    His glory, empire, and dazzling throne."
        --Victor Hugo.


Robert, after having lingered long on the shores of Lake Geneva, in the
city and its environs, so rich in natural beauties, and having admired the
grandeur of the Alps, and, above all, Mount Blanc, the Jura, and Mount
Salère, arrived at Saint René, a small village at the foot of the Great St.
Bernard. This was the 20th of May, 1824.

The young painter wished to pass the night at the convent with the monks,
so he asked for a guide, but was told that they only started in the morning
to take travellers to that high point, and the innkeeper advised him to
wait until the next day; but he was not willing to take this advice, as
time was so precious to him that a day passed in inaction was an
irreparable loss. So be started out through the village to look for a
guide, but the man had told him the truth--there was not a guide to be
found. Robert expressed so much regret at his disappointment to a worthy
old man that he replied:

"If it were any other day Joseph would conduct monsieur better than anyone
else, for be was the oldest guide, but unfortunately he could not do it,
for it was the 20th of May, and this day he always spends at church in
praying for his benefactor. But if you will go to his house you can see
him; it is down there," at the same time pointing to a pretty little
cottage with a garden in front. "A famous history, monsieur, that of
Joseph, and if he goes up with you, be will tell it you, and I must not
take up more of your time."

"I am much obliged for your information, my good man, and will try and put
it to profit." Then he took the road toward the house, and soon reached it,
but imagine his disappointment to find it closed! As he was turning to
leave, he met a man of about fifty years of age, with a woman, still fresh
and beautiful, leaning on his arm, and they seemed to be absorbed in each
other; and in looking at them Robert forgot for a moment the guide he was
seeking. They stopped at the gate, and were about entering it when he
asked, "Is this the man Joseph of whom I was told--the guide up the
mountain?"

"At your service, sir," replied he. "I am the person; do you wish to be
taken there?"

"I do, but they told me at the village that you could not be induced to go
on the 20th of May, but I thought I would ask for myself, and I assure you
I will be very grateful if you can make this sacrifice in my favor, for I
have the greatest desire to pass the night with the good monks." His
amiable and polite manner had won the favor of the guide, but still he was
undecided. Robert, seeing his hesitation, begged him to give his consent.

"It seems a little late to start," said the guide, reflecting and looking
as if he did not care to go.

"Oh, we can walk fast," said Robert gayly.

"Well, I find I must give up to you," said he, half sadly, half smiling.
"Come in the house, sir, while I change my clothes, and you may flatter
yourself with having gained a victory. It has been many years since I put
my foot on the mountain on the anniversary of this great day. It has been
twenty-four years since then."

Robert was looking at a picture while he spoke, representing Napoleon
mounted on a mule, climbing up the Saint Bernard, escorted by a guide.

"Aye, aye," said Joseph with emphasis, "this is my history--that guide who
walks by the side of the first consul is me, I had the honor of conducting
him."

"Indeed," cried Robert, "oh! do tell me about it. If my poor Cyprien was
only here, how delighted he would be to hear of the emperor he loves so
much."

"Is this Cyprien one of his faithful soldiers, sir?"

{75}

"Yes, and he is more than that; he is one of those soldier heroes who would
give the last drop of their heart's blood for the emperor. I have had the
happiness, with God's aid, to have saved from misery this noble wreck of
imperial glory, for he was indeed miserable when he lost his emperor."

"Well, my good young man, that decides me at once, for, since you have
saved one of the old soldiers of the emperor, I can refuse you nothing, for
I loved him also, and had good reasons for so doing. We will start, and on
the way I will tell you to whom I am indebted for this pretty little house,
so good a wife, and children, that make all my joy. We must go rapidly, or
we will run the risk of a storm, for we have only time to arrive before
night, and in our mountains storms come up very suddenly." Then turning to
his wife, he embraced her and said, "Don't be uneasy, Margaret, I will
return to-morrow." They walked briskly, and soon left the village behind
them, and the guide commenced his history.

"Twenty-four years ago, our valley was not so peaceful as it now is. It was
invaded by French troops, whose tumult was rather a strange contrast to the
usual noise of the mountains--the roar of the tempest and the moving of
the avalanches. The guides all became worn out with fatigue, and one
morning I was ordered out. I did not receive the order with much pleasure,
but I was young, poor, and unfortunately in love with the most beautiful
girl in the valley. The officer whom I was to guide wore a three-cornered
hat, and enveloped in a sort of gray riding coat. He had with him two other
gentlemen, but be rode first, and I was at his side. He was rather
singular, and did not seem to know or care where he was, though we were
above frightful precipices which gave the bravest a vertigo, but he was as
tranquil as if on a lounge in his chamber. It seemed so strange to me that
he had no fear and was so silent. But after awhile he spoke to me,
questioned me about my life, my pleasures, my troubles. His manner was so
winning that I told him everything, and when on the chapter of my loves
told him I would die if I could not marry Margaret.

"Well," said he, smiling, "why not marry her then?"

"For a very simple reason," I replied. "I am poor and she is rich, and I
cannot obtain the prize until I have a house and garden."

He listened eagerly, then questioned me a great deal, and at last fell into
a a reverie, and remained silent and absorbed, until we arrived at the
convent, where the good monks came out to receive us. I did not pay much
attention to this, I was so chagrined. A little time after, the officer
came to me with a letter, which he directed me to take to the headquarters
of the army, on the other side of the mountain. I went and returned in the
evening from Saint Pierre with the answer. Imagine my surprise and
mortification when I found that the person with whom I had spoken so
familiarly was none other than the first consul, and his companions were
General Duroe and Secretary Bourrienne. I was terrified, thinking I should
be thrown into prison for daring to speak so familiarly to my superior.
What an end to my fears! The first consul gave me for my trouble a house,
garden, and money, so that all my dreams were in an instant realized. I
could now marry Margaret, and I was so completely overcome with joy that I
thought it was a miracle. This great man did all for me, and you can now
see why I love the emperor, and why all my happy remembrances are dated
from the 20th of May.

This was only one of the many kind acts of Napoleon during his glorious
life; and if we are electrified in reading of his high military deeds, how
much more touching are those simple charities which show the beauty of his
soul, and the goodness and generosity of his heart, that will ever render
his memory immortal.

{76}

Joseph had related with so much spirit and animation his astonishing
adventure, and Robert had listened with such eagerness, that neither
thought of hastening their steps. The guide had necessarily consumed more
time in relating it than we take, and night was fast coming on. The sun had
long gone down, and the guide listened uneasily to a kind of rolling noise
that sounded like distant thunder.

"The deuce!" he cried, "it will not be long before it is upon us. It is the
voice of the storm; don't you hear it? Oh! mercy! we have lost time, and I
have been the cause of it. O holy Virgin, come to our help!"

Robert could not conceive the cause of his fright, but, stopping to listen,
he felt the same terror. "O Lord my God, protect me!" was his simple
prayer, which gave him strength to follow the guide, and the consciousness
of danger gave them wings.

A violent wind filled the air with the snow that was loosened by the
mildness of the atmosphere, and it was so thick that they could scarcely
see. Then the tempest flapped its strongest wings, and moved huge masses of
snow, which threatened at each moment to ingulf them. These frightful
avalanches, these precipices, these abysses without bottom, these peaks
almost lost to sight, these eternal glaciers, and the imminent peril which
appeared on all sides, and presented, above all, the image of death; all
these sublime horrors, which freeze with fear the heart of guilty man,
Robert contemplated with joyous tranquillity. Before the awful majesty of
this grand scene, he adored God, whose powerful hand can raise the anger of
the elements or calm them at his pleasure. But the tempest increased so
much in fury that he was obliged to concentrate all his faculties to
preserve his equilibrium. The snow was blinding, and the guide, in terror
of making false steps that might plunge them into some abyss, went along
hesitatingly, lamenting and believing they were lost. More uneasy for the
guide than himself, in their alarming position, Robert tried to raise his
courage by speaking of his wife and children, when in an opening of the
path a large sign appeared.

"Oh! we are saved:" said the guide in a faltering voice, and, with a hand
made stronger by hope, rang a large bell, which had a clear, vibrating
sound.

This was the signal of distress that told the good monks that travellers
needed their help. But in the raging of the storm the sound of the bell is
not heard at the convent, and, numbed with cold and fatigue, Joseph swoons
on the snow. Robert tries to warm him and bring him back to consciousness,
but without avail, and at last he is seized with vertigo and dreadful
shiverings, and his numbed limbs refuse to take him further. But the
strength of his soul is greater than his body, and he falls breathing a
prayer to God. Not a sound but the noise of the elements is heard, and the
sliding of the snow that covers their inanimate bodies, and threatens to
leave no trace of them.

"O God! will you let the orphan, whom you have taken under the wings of
your love, perish in this mountain solitude? Will not his pious invocation
be carried to your throne by the angel of prayer?"

Listen! The liberators come; the snow is scratched away with precaution,
and they are found by the noble dogs, gifted with almost sublime instincts
which they consecrate to man, with a devotion and fidelity that puts to
shame many of the human species. Yes; it was "Help" and "Saviour" who had
found the spot where Robert and the guide lay, and breathed on their hands
and faces to try to relieve them; but, being unable to do it, they made the
mountain re-echo with their barks, which brought out the monks, whom they
guided to the spot. The bodies were then carried to the convent, and after
a few hours restored to consciousness; and the kind monks heartily gave
thanks that they were permitted to rescue from certain death two of their
fellow-beings. Could any mission be more noble than theirs; any devotion
more self-sacrificing?
{77}
Impossible; and in all the known world they are honored for their sublime
virtues, and acknowledged as noble martyrs of Christian charity.

Robert passed eight days at the convent, and on each one saw the touching
piety and indefatigable solicitude of the monks. The last few days he made
several excursions over the mountain, where perpetual winter reigns; and
was dazzled by the lustre of the immense glaciers, and the glory of his
lonely surroundings. He sometimes thought if he were not an artist he would
consecrate the remainder of his life to the practice of charity, but his
love of art was too strong, and sunny Italy held out such attractions that
be was lured on, carrying with him the benediction and good wishes of those
noble men who had brought him back to life.


------

    From the Dublin Review


    Lecky's History Of Rationalism.[Footnote 12]

    [Footnote 12: History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of
    Rationalism in Europe. By W. E. Lecky, M.A., London: Longmans, Green &
    Co.]


It has been said by a very high authority that the study of history is
destined to assume a new aspect, from the application to it of a higher
order of minds and a more philosophical method of treatment. We are passing
out of the age of speciality into the age of generalization. Innumerable
observers have collected facts, and innumerable speculators have multiplied
theories; and we now seem to have arrived at that period when it becomes
the proper function of the thinker to co-ordinate the stores of knowledge
which have been set apart for him by others; evolve laws from the multitude
of instances; separate the truth from the falsehood of conflicting
theories; conjoin effects with their causes, and trace the half-revealed
and far-reaching relations between distant and apparently unconnected
phenomena. The influence of such a spirit--long felt in the less
complicated sciences--is now, even in England, beginning to act on those
which are more intricate. For history the time is rapidly passing away
during which a great but much erring thinker could say that it was the
unfortunate peculiarity of the history of man that, although its separate
parts had each been handled with considerable ability, hardly anyone had
hitherto attempted to combine them into a whole, or to ascertain the way in
which they are connected with each other. On the contrary, he said, a
strange idea prevailed among historians that their business was merely to
narrate events; so that, according to the notion of history in his day
prevalent, any writer who, from indolence of thought or from natural
incapacity, was unfit to deal with the highest branches of knowledge, had
only to pass some years in reading a certain number of books, and then he
was, _ipso facto_, qualified to be a historian. The time is fast
coming when those dreary and monotonous narratives of court intrigues and
party cabals will exist only to memorialize an age when the history of
kings was substituted for the history of nations, and the consideration of
the actions of a few individuals for the exposition of the life of the
whole social organization.
{78}
History is growing to be less of a chronicle and more of a science; her
office is no longer thought to be confined to the registration of a few
superficially prominent facts; but the discovery, by a scientific
induction, of historical laws, and the investigation of causes, is chiefly
aimed at; and, as the circumstances which have to be taken into account in
such a method of writing history are often dismissed by the older school of
writers as almost unworthy of notice, and are, moreover, exceedingly
numerous and of almost infinite complication, a far wider and more
diversified range of learning and a far greater power of analysis than were
formerly either required or expected are supposed in the historian.

It would be idle to imagine that the influence of this more philosophical
way of writing history will not extend, or has not extended, to theology.
One of its first results has been the unpremeditated vindication by
non-Catholic writers of the mediaeval church. And that naturally; for the
action of the church in the middle ages was founded on their social state,
and it was therefore only when history descended into the bosom of society
that she could receive a fuller meed of justice. The Catholic Church has
been more philosophically treated, and her primary attribute, that she is a
kingdom, more perfectly realized; while a flood of light has been thrown on
the historical character of Protestantism, and to that farrago of heresies
the conclusions arrived at have been almost uniformly unfavorable. Nor must
we suppose that it will affect only the treatment of the external history
of Christianity, and leave untouched the history of its dogmas. It has
effected, and will hereafter, to a still greater extent effect, that both
Catholic doctrines and heretical opinions will be studied not only, as
heretofore, in their objective aspect--with respect to their evidence and
connections one with another--but more and more in their subjective aspect,
as to their influence on the minds of those who hold them. We have, to a
great extent, yet to see the results of a profound and extensive study of
dogmas in this light; but to study them in this light is undoubtedly the
tendency of the present age. We have thus opened to us a field of
investigation almost new, and in its nature very different from the beaten
tracks in which controversialists have hitherto followed one another.
Whatever be the results that may be thus finally arrived at, there cannot
be a doubt but that they will be fraught with immense advantage to the
cause of truth; and in the course of any researches that may be made into
the subjective influence of individual dogmas a number of facts hitherto
but little attended to--will be brought forward from the most various
sources; so that it will exceedingly behove those who have to attend to the
defence of Christianity to make sure that these are truly alleged and
represented.

Mr. Lecky, as we have before noticed, endeavors to apply to religious the
more advanced method or secular history. He attempts to trace the
subjective influence of religious opinions, the manner in which they
mutually affected each other, and in which they acted or were reacted on by
the other influences of their time. He does not pay much attention to the
question of _evidence_, or to the arguments by which they were
supported, except in so far as the use of particular arguments or lines of
argument affords him some indication of the temper of the times of which he
writes. The very idea of his work--a history of religious
opinions--compelled him to attend to this rather than to the alleged
evidence of particular doctrines: the latter being the proper province of
the theologian as the former is of the historian. But from this necessary
one-sidedness of his work Mr. Lecky seems to have been led into a
corresponding one-sidedness of mind. Every one will grant that education,
disposition, the opinions, and, still more, the tone of those around us
make it exceedingly difficult to treat religious questions on the sole
ground of evidence; and Catholics are continually urging this against the
Protestants who, by their denial of the infallibility of the church,
multiply indefinitely the number of questions which have to be thus
decided; but Mr. Lecky goes further, and says that there really is not
sufficient evidence for us, situated as we are, to come to a reliable
conclusion at all.
{79}
It is natural, therefore, that he should now and then take occasion to sift
supposititious evidence and fallacious arguments; and in several places he
states with great force the nature and logical value of the reasons given
against some or other of the old doctrines now denied by Protestants. An
instance of this may be interesting to our readers; the subjoined passage
is taken from his second chapter On the Miracles of the Church:

  "If we ask, what are the grounds on which the cessation the of miracles
  is commonly maintained; they may, I suppose, be summed up such as
  follows:

  "Miracles, it is said, are the divine credentials of an inspired
  messenger announcing doctrines which could not otherwise be established.
  They prove that he is neither an imposter nor an enthusiast; that his
  teaching is neither the work of a designing intellect nor of an
  overheated imagination. From the nature of the case, this could not be
  proved in any other way. ... Miracles are, therefore, no more improbable
  than a revelation; for a revelation would be ineffectual without
  miracles. But, while this consideration destroys the common objection to
  the gospel miracles, it separates them clearly from those of the Church
  of Rome. The former were avowedly exceptional; they were designed to
  introduce a new religion, and to establish a supernatural message. The
  latter were simply means of edification; they were directed to no object
  that could not otherwise be attained, and they were represented as taking
  place in a dispensation that was intended to be not of sight but of
  faith. Besides this, miracles should be regarded as the most awful and
  impressive manifestations of divine power. To make them habitual and
  commonplace would be to degrade if not to destroy their character, which
  would be still further abased if we admitted those which appear trivial
  and puerile. The miracles of the New Testament were always characterized
  by dignity and solemnity; they always conveyed some spiritual lesson, and
  conferred some actual benefit, besides attesting the character or the
  worker. The mediaeval miracles, on the contrary, were often trivial,
  purposeless, and unimpressive; constantly verging on the grotesque, and
  not unfrequently passing the border.

  "Such is, I think, a fair epitome of the common arguments in favor of the
  cessation of miracles; and they are undoubtedly very plausible and very
  cogent; but, after all, what do they prove? Not that miracles have
  ceased, but that, _supposing_ them to have ceased, there is nothing
  surprising or alarming in the fact. ... This is the full extent to which
  they can legitimately be carried. As an _à priori_ proof, they are
  far too weak to withstand the smallest amount of positive testimony.
  Miracles, it is said, are intended exclusively to accredit an inspired
  messenger. But, after all, what proof is there of this? It is simply an
  hypothesis, plausible and consistent it may be, but entirely unsupported
  by positive testimony. Indeed, we may go further, and say that it is
  distinctly opposed by your own facts. ... You must admit that the Old
  Testament relates many miracles which will not fall under your canon. ...
  But the ecclesiastical miracles, it is said, are often grotesque; and
  appear _primâ facie_ absurd, and excite an irresistible repugnance.
  A sufficiently dangerous test in an age when men find it more and more
  difficult to believe any miracles whatever. A sufficiently dangerous test
  for those who know the tone that has been long adopted, over an immense
  part of Europe, toward such narratives as the deluge or the exploits of
  Samson, the speaking ass or the possessed pigs! Besides this, a great
  proportion of the ecclesiastical miracles are simply reproductions of
  those which are recorded in the Bible; and if there are mingled with them
  some that appear manifest impostures, this may be a very good reason for
  treating these narratives with a more jealous scrutiny, but is certainly
  no reason for maintaining that they are all below contempt. The Bible
  neither asserts nor implies the revocation of supernatural gifts; and if
  the general promise that these gifts should be conferred may have been
  intended to apply only to the apostles, it is at least as susceptible of
  a different interpretation. If these miracles were actually continued, it
  is surely not difficult to discover the beneficial purpose which they
  would fulfil. They would stimulate a languid piety; they would prove
  invaluable auxiliaries to missionaries laboring among barbarous and
  unreasoning savages, who, from their circumstances and habits of mind,
  are utterly incapable of forming any just estimate of the evidences of
  the religion they are called upon to embrace. .... To say that these
  miracles are false because they are Roman Catholic is to assume the very
  question at issue."--Vol. i. pp. 173-177.

{80}

There is nothing, indeed, that is particularly new in this reasoning; our
readers must have frequently seen or heard it urged against Protestants;
but it is valuable in Mr. Lecky's history, as showing the view taken of the
ordinary Protestant arguments by the higher class of anti-Catholic writers.
In a similar manner he disposes of the vulgar arguments against magic and
sorcery in a passage which, however, is, we regret to say, too long for
quotation (Vol. i. pp. 9-16). He there concludes by saying that the
evidence on that subject is so vast and so varied, that it is impossible to
disbelieve it without what, on any other subject, we should consider the
most extraordinary rashness. The subject was examined in tens of thousands
of cases, in almost every country in Europe, by tribunals which included
the acutest lawyers and ecclesiastics of the age, on the scene and at the
time when the alleged acts had taken place, and with the assistance of
innumerable sworn witnesses. As condemnation would be followed by a fearful
death, and the accused were, for the most part, miserable beings whose
destruction can have been an object to no one, the judges can have had no
sinister motives in convicting, and had, on the contrary, the most urgent
reasons for exercising their power with the utmost caution and
deliberation. The accusations were often of such a character that all must
have known the truth or falsehood of what was alleged. _The evidence is
essentially cumulative._ Some cases, it is added, may be explained by
monomania, others by imposture, others by chance coincidences, and others
by optical delusions; but, when we consider the multitudes of strange
statements that were sworn to and registered in legal documents, he
confesses that it is very difficult to frame a general rationalistic
explanation which will not involve an extreme improbability.

And now, passing to another subject, even Catholics may find in the
following passage something worthy of being dwelt on:

  "The world is governed by its ideals, and seldom or never has there been
  one which has exercised a more profound and on the whole a more salutary
  influence than the mediaeval conception of the Virgin. For the first time
  woman was elevated to her rightful position, and the sanctity of weakness
  was recognized as well as the sanctity of sorrow. No longer the slave or
  toy of man, no longer associated only with ideas of degradation and of
  sensuality, woman rose, in the person of the Virgin Mother, into a new
  sphere, and became the object of a reverential homage of which antiquity
  had had no conception. Love was idealized. The moral charm and beauty of
  female excellence was for the first time felt. A new type of character
  was called into being; a new kind of admiration was fostered. Into a
  harsh and ignorant and benighted age this ideal type infused a type of
  gentleness and of purity unknown to the proudest civilizations of the
  past. In the pages of living tenderness which many a monkish writer has
  left in honor of his celestial patron; in the millions who, in many lands
  and in many ages, have sought with no barren desire to mould their
  character into her image; in those holy maidens who, for the love of
  Mary, have separated themselves from all the glories and pleasures of the
  world, to seek in fastings and vigils and humble charity to render
  themselves worthy of her benediction; in the new sense of honor, in the
  chivalrous respect, in the softening of manners, in the refinement of
  tastes displayed in all the walks of society; in these and in many other
  ways we detect its influence. All that was best in Europe clustered
  around it, and it is the origin of many of the purest elements of our
  civilization,"--Vol. i. pp. 234-235.

"But," he is pleased to add, "the price, and perhaps the necessary price,
of this was the exaltation of the Virgin as an omnipresent deity of
infinite power as well as of infinite condescension." Here we have an
example of the extraordinary mistakes which are occasionally made by Mr.
Lecky. We by no means accuse him of intentional misrepresentation; and in a
work of nearly a thousand pages, of which there is scarcely a page without
a note, and scarcely a note without six or seven references or quotations,
it was impossible but that some inaccuracies should creep in. But he
unfortunately often uses a looseness and generality of reference which
makes his notes almost useless to anyone desirous of verifying them, and
his inaccuracies, some of which bear with them an appearance of great
carelessness, are incredibly frequent; while we desiderate in him that
fulness of theological knowledge which a writer ought to possess who
criticises dogmatic systems so dogmatically as he does.
{81}
In the present case he actually seems to think that the Blessed Virgin was
regarded as an omnipresent deity because it was believed that she could
hear prayers anywhere addressed to her. But the teaching of Catholic
theologians makes a very great difference between the omnipresence of God
and the manner in which the Blessed Virgin and the saints are cognizant of
the prayers poured out to them on earth. The Scotists ordinarily teach that
God reveals to the saints in glory whatever it is expedient that they
should know; the Thomists that they see in the vision of God the prayers
and the necessities of men; some have urged the elevation and expansion of
even their natural faculties consequent on their entrance into the state of
glory; but none have ever supposed them to be present, as God is, to the
whole created universe. Mr. Lecky, proceeds to state that before the belief
that a finite spirit could hear prayer wherever offered was firmly
established, it was believed that at least they hovered round the places
where their relics had been deposited, and there, at least, attended to the
prayers of their suppliants. In support of this assertion he quotes the
following words as from St. Jerome: "Ergo cineres suos amant animae
martyrum, et circumvolant eos, semperque praesentes sunt; ne forte si
aliquis precator advenerit absentes audire non possint," to which he gives
the extraordinary reference, "Epistolae, 1. iii. c. 13." These words indeed
occur in St. Jerome; but they occur as the sarcasm of an opponent which St.
Jerome gives only in order to refute it. The passage is quoted from
Vigilantius in St. Jerome's book against that heretic; but the saint
himself calls it a "portent worthy of hell," and argues, in reply to the
idea expressed in it, that we cannot set laws to God; that the martyrs
follow the Lamb wheresoever he goeth; that the demons wander over the whole
world; and are the martyrs to be shut up in a box? As to the Blessed Virgin
being regarded as a deity of infinite power and infinite condescension,
those Catholic writers who in their devotional writings have spoken the
most strongly of her power, have merely said that God will never refuse her
anything she asks, and that she will never ask anything inconsistent with
his Providence. Mr. Lecky shows in many other places the grossest ignorance
of Catholic theology. He quotes, in evidence of the present belief of the
Roman Church in demoniacal possession, a ritual which, he says, "is used in
the diocese of Tarbes." He need not have gone to an obscure provincial
ritual for proof of his assertion; he will hardly find any Catholic
theologian who denies it; and the most used, and best known of our modern
theological writers has devoted a special chapter to the subject (Perrone,
De Deo Creatore, Part I., c. v.) The doctrine of punishment by a material
fire "still lingers," he tells us, "in the Roman Catholic manuals for the
poor." If by this he meant that it does not remain also among theologians,
this is not true; Perrone, one of the most moderate, calls it, "sententia
communiter reccpta." (De Deo Creatore, Part III., c. vi. a. 3.)

In the latter part of his chapter "on the Developments of Rationalism," Mr.
Lecky has put forward an opinion that the doctrine of the material
character of the penal fire is closely connected with the ancient opinion,
that the soul is in some sense material. The doctrine of a material fire
became, he says, the foundation of all opinion that the soul is of a
material nature; and he refers to Tertullian, citing De Anima, c. viii.
This assertion is, however, utterly without foundation. It nowhere appears
that this was the chief foundation on which this error was rested. Far from
making this material conception of punishment the chief ground of his
argument, Tertullian, in the passage quoted by Mr. Lecky, does not argue
from the materiality of the fire at all.
{82}
What he does argue from is the corporeal manner in which Abraham, Dives,
and Lazarus, are represented in the Gospel; from Abraham's bosom the tongue
or Dives, and the finger of Lazarus; and he mentions the "ignis" merely in
an incidental manner, and not to argue from its material nature, but to
found his reasoning on the general proposition that whatever is susceptible
of "fovela" or of "passio" must be corporeal. It is, of course, quite
conceivable that a writer, who believed the soul to be of a material
nature, might argue from the commonly received opinion of a material fire;
but the origin of this opinion was in fact quite different. Some of those
who held it even believed the "fire" of hell to be metaphorical. But before
the advent of Christianity the minds of the people had been constantly and
persistently directed to the sensible and the material; from the ranks of
the people Christianity was recruited; and it is not wonderful if somewhat
of their former habits of thought clung to those who were converted. It was
only by degrees, and after a patient and silent opposition to prevailing
habits of thought, that Christianity succeeded in spiritualizing religious
conceptions; and the time which elapsed before this had been effected--a
period of more than three hundred years--was one of no little confusion in
this regard. But no one seems to have been led into the error of supposing
the human soul to be material by the notion of a material fire. Some
believed this to be the case because they could not see how it could
possibly be otherwise; they were unable to rise to the idea of a spirit,
properly so called; they could not conceive anything to be real, and not
material. That this was the case, in particular, with Tertullian, cannot be
doubted, whether we consider his way of speaking in the whole book _De
Anienâ_, in the book _Adv. Praxeam_, c. xi., and in the _De Carne
Christi_, c. xi., or the pre-eminently sensuous and realistic character
of his mind. The Platonic philosophy was another foundation of this opinion
respecting the human soul. Some writers who were especially attached to
Platonism, as Origen, explained the Platonic doctrine of emanation as
meaning that God alone is a pure Spirit, all beings proceeding from God
having a trace of materiality greater or less as they are more or less
removed from him. They therefore believed all created spirits to be in some
sense material; and forms of expression which may seem properly to belong
to this opinion remained, as is often the case, long after the opinion
itself had vanished. But the source of the whole error was, as is evident,
the materialized method of conception of pre-Christian times.

But Mr. Lecky goes much further than this. He tells us that this opinion of
the materiality of the human soul--which, if we except at most two or
three writers, had certainly died out in the sixth, if not in the fifth
century--was the dominant opinion in the middle ages:

  "Under the influence of mediaeval habits of thought, every spiritual
  conception was materialized, and what at an earlier and a later period
  was generally deemed the language of metaphor, was universally regarded
  as the language of fact. The realizations of the people were all derived
  from paintings, sculpture, or ceremonies that appealed to the senses, and
  all subjects were therefore reduced to palpable images. The angel in the
  last judgment was constantly represented weighing the souls in a literal
  balance, while devils clinging to the scales endeavored to disturb the
  equilibrium. Sometimes the soul was portrayed as a sexless child, rising
  out of the mouth of the corpse. But, above all, the doctrine of purgatory
  arrested and enchained the imagination. ... Men who believed in a
  physical soul readily believed in a physical punishment, men who
  materialized their view of the punishment, materialized their view of the
  sufferers.

  "We find, however," he proceeds, "some time before the reformation,
  evident signs of an endeavor on the part of a few writers to rise to a
  purer conception of the soul." And he goes on to attribute this to "the
  pantheistic writings that flowed from the school of Averrhoes;" and to
  ascribe to the Cartesian philosophy "the final downfall of the
  materialistic hypothesis." Vol. i. pp. 373-378.

{83}

It is not too much to say that the whole of this is entirely unsupported by
evidence. Anyone who likes to glance over the Coimbricenses _De
Animâ_, the beginning of the second book of the Sentences, the questions
_De Animâ_ in the Summa of St. Thomas, the recapitulation of the
scholastic theology on that subject in the third volume of Suarez, or the
very earliest treatises _De Angelis_, will see that, far from there
being merely "a few writers" who maintained the spirituality of the soul,
the notion of immateriality was as well defined in the dominant scholastic
philosophy as ever it was by Descartes; whose doctrine that the essence of
the soul is thought, was clearly stated by the scholastics in the sense
that intellection can only belong to the spiritual, and not to the material
and the extended. [Footnote 13] The manner in which the Scholastics
explained the punishment of a spiritual being by a material fire affords us
a test-question on this subject. _Did_ their "intense realization" of
this doctrine lead them to infer the materiality of the soul? Certainly
not. On the contrary; _because_ all thoroughly realized the
spirituality of the soul, all felt this difficulty regarding the manner of
its punishment; but, although there was sufficient diversity among them as
to its explanation, not one had recourse to the materialistic hypothesis.

    [Footnote 13: See St. Thomas Contra Gentiles, 1.2, c. 49, 50, 51, 65,
    cf. 66, where an immense number of arguments, in great part, of course,
    drawn from the philosophy of the day, is heaped up to prove the
    spirituality of the soul.]

Nor is Mr. Lecky correct in stating that the Arabian philosophy had a
spiritualizing influence on philosophy and theology. That philosophy
eminently favored the "_multiplicatio entium sine necessitate_," than
which nothing is more unspiritualizing. Some of those who held it expounded
the doctrine of matter and form in a manner dangerous to the spirituality
of the soul. [Footnote 14] They held the perilous doctrine of emanation,
and it would be quite a mistake to suppose that the description of error
which they taught had any conformity of spirit with the poetical and
sentimental pantheistic theories of the present day.

    [Footnote 14: See  St. Thomas, Op. de Angelis, cap 5.]

It is chiefly from the character of the then religious art, which (of
course) represented spiritual subjects by material symbols, that Mr. Lecky
argues that the middle ages materialized all spiritual conceptions. Thus,
in a note to p. 232, vol. 1., he speaks thus:

  "The strong desire natural to the middle ages to give a palpable form to
  the mystery of the Incarnation, was shown curiously in the notion of a
  conception by the ear. In a hymn, ascribed to St. Thomas à Becket, occur
  the lines:--

    "Ave Virgo, Mater Christi,
     Quae per aurem concepisti,
       Gabriele nuntio."

  And in an old glass window, now I believe in one of the museums of Paris,
  the Holy Ghost is represented hovering over the Virgin in the form of a
  dove, while a ray of light passes from his beak to her ear, along which
  ray an infant Christ is descending."--Langlois, _Peinture sur
  Verre_, p. 157.

And our readers will remember remarks of a like bearing in the quotation
last given. Such criticisms are, however, to us merely evidence of so many
curious misapprehensions. They merely show that an acquaintance with the
history of religious art is but a very inadequate preparation for writing
the history of religious dogmas. It is perfectly impossible to represent
spiritual things in painting and sculpture otherwise than by material
images. Nothing is more common than so to represent them even among
Protestants of the present day; nothing was more common in the Old
Testament, the very stronghold of the ancient anthropomorphites. We feel no
inclination to deny that it is exceedingly difficult for the poor and the
ignorant to rise to the conception of a spirit, and almost all mankind
represent to themselves even the very Deity under some refined material
image; but when such representations occupied a prominent position in
public worship, there was an opportunity, and that frequently made use of,
of correcting an untruthful imagination.

{84}

We have no hesitation in saying that there is far more unconscious
anthropomorphism among the Protestant than among the Catholic poor. The
doctrines of revelation make known a world akin to, yet not the same as,
this; they tell of an order of things itself unseen, but possessing
counterparts and shadows here. It is, therefore, not wonderful that there
exists a constant tendency to forget that these are but imperfect types and
symbols, and to remodel the truths of faith into conformity with what we
see around us. To correct this tendency is one of the functions of the
science of theology; and the conclusions of theology, infiltrating among
the people, keep them from sinking into earthly and anthropomorphic views
of religion, these conclusions being communicated by the ordinary resources
in the hands of the church, which, certainly, are far more efficacious in
the Catholic than in the Protestant system. Indeed, of all the reproaches
which have been directed against the theology of the middle ages, that of
being in its spirit gross and material is one of the most unfounded and the
most unjust. With far greater truth might such a reproach be directed
against the Protestant theology of the last three centuries. In the middle
ages, theology had a code and a standard of her own; she was the queen of
the sciences; she regulated and moulded the ideas of the time. Now,
condemned to occupy a subordinate position, she is content to take her
ideas from those current in the world, and to use her terms, not in their
proper and theological signification, but in the meanings derived from the
manner of their present use in physical science and in common life. An
example of this occurs in the case of the word _person_, the loss of
the theological meaning of which among Protestants has confused, if not
obliterated, the doctrine of the Trinity. In Protestantism, the belief of
the people lives chiefly by a tradition propagated through no recognized
theological channel; a tradition which, consequently, daily grows more
feeble and less definite; which is continually becoming more and more
corrupted, more low, and earthly, and anthropomorphous. Look at the common
Protestant idea of the happiness of the blessed. The great Catholic
doctrine which places the essence of the beatitude of man, not in a
prolongation and refinement of the pleasures of this world, not even in the
sight of Christ's humanity, but in that vision of God as God which is
emphatically called beatific, had almost faded out of sight. They look
forward to an earthly millennium, which is little better than a
glorification of commerce, material prosperity, and natural virtue, to be
succeeded by a heaven of which the joys very much resemble those which some
Catholic theologians with Suarez [Footnote 15] assign to infants who die
without baptism. But against the reproach of lowness and materialism of
conception being ever directed against the theologians of mediaeval times,
the doctrine of the beatific vision, which they so fully and so beautifully
evolved, stands a perpetual protest. For in what was this coarseness and
lowness of thought more likely to appear, than in their conception of the
greatest happiness of man? Or who were more likely to teach what is far
removed from vulgar and worldly conceptions than men who placed the sum of
all happiness in the vision and fruition of divine essence, which,
according to them, could be seen by no corporal eye, [Footnote 16] and in
which was, they said, that joy which eye had not seen nor ear heard,
neither had it entered into the heart of man to conceive? The whole of the
scholastic treatise _De Deo Uno_ is but another magnificent protest
against such an accusation.
{85}
The heresy of Gilbert Porretanus [Footnote 17] would never be condemned by
the Protestants of the present day; nor has ever the conception of the
divine simplicity in perfection been so fully realized as it was by those
much-abused theologians. The mediatorship of our blessed Lord is now
commonly apprehended by Protestants in a manner which makes a real
difference of character between the father and son; but no one who knows
anything of the scholastic doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation can
imagine that these theologians would have tolerated for a moment a notion
so frightfully heretical. With respect to psychology, the scholastic age
saw the death of Traducianism; and anyone who has attended to the earlier
scholastic opinions respecting the manner in which spirits suffer in the
penal fire, will have seen that they are of a more "spiritual" tendency
than those of most Protestant theologians. [Footnote 18]

    [Footnote 15: De Peccato Originall.]

    [Footnote 16: St. Thomas, in ima & q.12, a. 3; and other older authors
    in Sent. i. 1, d.1, & l. 4, d.49]

    [Footnote 17: Lombardus in Sent. i. 1, d.33, 34; and the commentators
    _ad loc_.]

    [Footnote 18: Sensation and "sensitive imagination" appeared to the
    scholastic to be of sole material a character, that they would not
    admit that these and other sensitive affections can exist in a separate
    spirit; and, consequently, those theologians who explain the punishment
    of separate spirits by the analogy of the soul and body, were compelled
    to admit that the pain must be different in kind from the "passio
    conjuncti."]

Mr. Lecky's criticisms on the opinion that the penal fire is literal and
material, and on the supposed general materialism of religious conception
in the middle ages, have led us into somewhat of a digression. We have yet,
however, one more remark to make. While he concedes that after the time of
Averrhoes "a few writers" endeavored to rise to a more spiritual manner of
conceiving the truths of faith, he asserts that in the preceding period,
before his influence and that of such sects as the Beguins had begun to be
felt, the state of things was infinitely worse. From the sixth to the
twelfth century materialism in religion was absolutely dominant. That the
period preceding the advent of the scholastic epoch was one of great
depression of theological science, cannot be doubted; and the amount of
what may in a general way be called anthropomorphism current at any period
is to a great extent conditioned by the want of general cultivation. But it
is very easy to overrate this depression. The episcopal and synodical
letters, for instance, which were exchanged concerning the subject of
adoptionism do not present to us theological science at, by any means, a
low ebb. The same may be said respecting the controversy in the ninth
century on the Eucharist; and the controversy on Predestination, if it do
not reveal any large amount of historical learning, at least exhibits
considerable activity of mind. Such of the writings of authors of that
period as the present writer has looked into, show an amount of learning
and acuteness which was certainly unexpected by him. That period was
necessarily uncritical; but we regard the taste for allegorizing, then as
formerly prevalent, to be an indication of something very different from a
degraded and material habit of thought. The great teacher of the
pre-scholastic age was St. Augustine, one of the most spiritual of the
fathers; and the writer who was chosen to supplement him was St. Gregory
the Great, who went farther than, and improved on, St. Augustine himself.
And, as to the religious art of that period, Mr. Lecky has himself alluded
to a peculiarity which, strangely enough, seems to have given him no
disquietude as to his general conclusion. In that period, he says:

  "We do not find the smallest tendency to represent God the Father.
  [Footnote 19] Scenes, indeed, in which he acted were frequently depicted,
  but the First Person of the Trinity was invariably superseded by the
  Second. Christ, in the dress and with the features appropriated to him in
  the representations of scenes from the New Testament, and often with the
  monogram underneath his figure, is represented creating man, condemning
  Adam and Eve to labor, ... or giving the law to Moses. With the exception
  of a hand sometimes extended from the cloud, and occasionally encircled
  with a nimbus, we find in this period no traces in art of the Creator.
{86}
  At first we can easily imagine that a purely spiritual conception of the
  Deity, and also the hatred that was inspired by the type of Jupiter,
  would have discouraged artists from attempting such a subject, and
  Gnosticism, which exercised a very great influence over Christian art,
  and which emphatically denied the divinity of the God of the Old
  Testament, tended in the same direction; but it is very unlikely that
  these reasons can have had any weight between the sixth and the twelfth
  centuries. For the more those centuries are studied, the more evident it
  becomes that the universal and irresistible tendency was then to
  materialize every spiritual conception, to form a palpable image of
  everything that was reverenced, to reduce all subjects within the domain
  of the senses."--(Vol. i. pp. 224-5.)

    [Footnote 19: We cannot ourselves, as Catholics, admit that there is
    necessarily the smallest impropriety or inexpediency in picture or
    sculptured representations of God the Father (See Denzinger, n. 1182
    and 1482); yet we may fairly argue that the absence of such, at the
    period in question, disproves Mr. Lecky's assertion that the dominant
    tendency of that period was anthropomorphous.]

The most celebrated of the theologians of the middle ages is undoubtedly
St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas, however, comes in for an extra share of
misrepresentation. At p. 72, vol. ii., we read of him, that he was one of
the ablest writers of the fourteenth century--he died in the thirteenth--
and that "he assures us that diseases and tempests are the direct acts of
the devil, that he can transport men at his pleasure through the air," and
that "omnes angeli, boni, et mali, ex naturali virtute habent potestatem
transmutandi corpora nostra." Now all this is precisely what St. Thomas
denies. In the first place, anyone would imagine from the manner in which
our author writes, that the great mediaeval theologian imagined that, in
the ordinary course of things, diseases and tempests are produced by
Satanic agency. St. Thomas never taught any such thing, but over and over
again refers both the one and the other to natural causes. [Footnote 20]

    [Footnote 20: V.g., Comm. in Ps. xvii., and in Arist. Meteor. i. 2,
    lect xvi.; cf. Summa, i. 2, q. 50, a. 2.]

Mr. Lecky ought to have written "may be;" but the meaning of the words
would have been very different, and their point would have been taken away.
Secondly, while St. Thomas teaches, in accordance with Holy Writ, that the
demons can exercise power over material things, he also teaches that they
cannot directly change the qualities of things, nor produce any
preternatural change except local motion: nor that at their pleasure; for
it is a principle with him that God does not permit them to do all that
which they have _per se_ the power of doing. [Footnote 21]

    [Footnote 21: Questiones de Malo, q. 16, art. 9, etc.; Questiones de
    Potentia Dei, q 6. art. 5.]

Thirdly, as to their natural power of transmuting our bodies. We have not
been able to find the exact words quoted above, but many similar phrases
occur in the _objections_ in the ninth article of the _Quaestio de
Daemonibus_, which, it is sufficient to say, St. Thomas solves by
saying:

  But on the other hand, St. Augustine [Footnote 22] says "Non solum animam
  sed nec corpus quidem nulla ratione crediderim daemonom arte vel
  potestate in brutalia lineamenta poese converti." ... I reply that, as
  the apostle says, "all things made by God in order," whence, as St.
  Augustine says, "the excellence of the universe is the excellence of
  order. ... and therefore Satan always uses natural agents as his
  instruments in the production of physical effects, and can so produce
  effects which exceed the efficacy of the natural agents; [Footnote 23]
  but he cannot cause the form of the human body to be changed into that of
  an animal, because this would be contrary to the order established by
  God; and all such conversions are, therefore, as Augustine shows in the
  place quoted, according to phantastical appearance rather than truth.

    [Footnote 22: De Civ. Dei. 1. 18, c. 88.]

    [Footnote 23: I.e., which exceeds their ordinary effects, because he
    can use them more skillfully (cf. ad. 11).]

At p. 350 of vol. I., Mr. Lecky tells us that the mediaeval writers taught
that God would make the contemplation of the sufferings of the lost an
essential elements in the happiness of the blessed. He does not know of
what he writes. It was taught that the essential element in their happiness
--the _Essentia Beatitudinis_,--is the vision of God; all else
accessory and subordinate. In a note to justify his assertion, he adds
these words:--"St. Thomas Aquinas says, 'Beati in regno coelesti videbunt
poenas damnatorum ut beatitudo illis magis complaceat.'" The quotation is
not accurate.
{87}
After quoting Isaias, ult. 24, be says, "Respondeo dicendum ad primam
questionem quòd a beatis nihil subtrahi debet quod _ad perfectionem
beatitudinis_ eorum pertineat: _unumquodque autem ex comparatione
contrarii magis cognoscitur_, quia contraria juxta se posita magis
elucescunt; et ideò, ut beatitudo sanctorum eis magis complaceat, _et de
eá uberiores gratias Deo agant_, datur eis ut poenam impiorum perfecte
intueantur." [Footnote 24] The passage of St. Thomas, as given by Mr.
Lecky, is just one of those which may very well bear either of two
meanings. It might mean something very repulsive and very cruel. But the
unmutilated passage can bear but one interpretation. St. Thomas does not
say that they rejoice in the sufferings themselves; but that they are
permitted to see them, in order that they may feel yet more intensely how
precious is their own beatitude, and thank God the more heartily for their
own escape.

    [Footnote 24: supplementum ad tertiam partem Summa, q.94, a. 1.]

In a note to his chapter on the Industrial History of Rationalism, Mr.
Lecky charges St. Thomas with what is nothing less than moral obliquity.
The Duchess of Brabant, he says, had a scruple of conscience about
tolerating the Jews. She therefore consulted St. Thomas; "who replied,
among other things that the Jews were doomed to perpetual servitude, and
that all their property being derived from usury might lawfully be taken
from them." Mr. Lecky is inaccurate both as to the confiscation of their
property and as to the perpetual servitude. St. Thomas does not say that
all their property was derived from usury, and it would, indeed, have been
rather a rash judgment in him to say so. But the Duchess of Brabant had
apparently desired to impose new burdens on the Jews, and in writing to St.
Thomas had stated that all their property seemed to be derived from usury;
to which he replied, that _if this were so_, they might lawfully be
compelled to make restitution. Nor does this by any means imply that all
their property was to be taken away from them, as appears from St. Thomas's
letter among his opuscula, [Footnote 25] and from his general doctrine
respecting restitution. [Footnote 26] With respect to the perpetual
servitude what St. Thomas does say is this: "_Although according to the
laws_ the Jews be, or were, through their own fault doomed to perpetual
servitude, and thus princes could appropriate their possessions as their
own, yet this is to be understood leniently, so that the necessaries of
life be by no means taken from them. _But since we ought, as the apostle
declares, to walk honestly in the sight of those who are without, of Jews
and Gentiles, and the Church of God, as the laws declare, compulsory
service is not to be required of them, which they were not wont to perform
in time past._" He goes on to say that if ill-gotten goods were taken
from the Jews, it would be unlawful for her to retain them, but they would
have to be restored to those from whom they had been unjustly taken; and
even under these conditions he declines to sanction any proceeding against
them, but only "si nihil aliud obsistat." Mr. Lecky also quotes, he says,
the Histriones of St. Thomas. What the Histriones of St. Thomas are, we
have not, we confess, the most remote idea.

    [Footnote 25: Opusc. xxii, in calce Opusculi de Regimine Principum.]

    [Footnote 26: Summa, 2, 2, q. 61-62, etc.]

Mr. Lecky professes to give the analyses of various theological beliefs and
tones of thought which have prevailed in other times. Of these, however, he
has had but little or no practical experience. He consequently puts before
us only certain restricted points of view, which have strongly impressed
themselves on his mind in the course of his studies and meditations. We are
hurried along by his words as by a flood; but while the effects which some
particular doctrine possibly _might_ produce if it were held alone are
vividly set before us, he totally loses sight of those other doctrines,
which were organically connected with it, and modified and regulated its
action. To evade one difficulty be falls into another: he concentrates his
gaze on a point that he may see more clearly; but, confining it there,
loses sight of those harmonies and contrasts, which make up the beauty of
the whole. In one direction this defect has had very great influence.
{88}
"Veritas" is, it is said, "in medio;" the present age has gone wrong all on
one side; and Mr. Lecky, who is an advanced disciple of the present age,
consequently considers that preceding ages have gone wrong all on the
other. He sees that there is a very great difficulty in adequately
realizing phases of thought so very different from those which now prevail.
And, because of this, he expends his strength on the points of difference,
neglecting for their sake things nearer to his apprehension; and the very
natural consequence is that he gives us a distorted and exaggerated picture
in which the common elements are not sufficiently brought out.

An instance of this occurs in his treatment of the subject of eternal
punishment. The general organization and want of order which pervades his
work is quite insufficient to account for the pertinacity with which he
again and again recurs to the subject. Like the whole anti-Christian party,
and very naturally, he detests the doctrine with his whole spirit; and he
allows this detestation to color his whole views of the middle ages. He
attributes to its influence whatever he finds, or imagines himself to have
found, of a hard, cruel, and repulsive character in their theory and
practice. He begins by misrepresenting the character of the doctrine
itself. He separates it from the conditioning doctrines which were taught
along with it, and which regulated and directed its influence. He dwells
almost entirely on the terrible side of the then existing Christianity, and
almost altogether neglects the operation of the concurring principle of
love, the opposite pole of the Christian motives. And then he concludes
that to its influence was due the severity of punishments in the middle
ages. A universal terrorism was produced. The sense of the divine mercy was
destroyed. The sufferings of the lost were at first regarded with horror;
but as men became more used to the thing, the horror was changed to
indifference, and the indifference to a barbarous delight in the
contemplation and even the infliction of pain. It will not require many
arguments to show that such a method of treatment is monstrous. Mr. Lecky
ought to have noticed that the causes which in the middle ages led to
peculiar stress being laid on the doctrine of eternal punishment, were
causes external to, and mostly in direct opposition, to the church; and
that their tendency was met by a corresponding realization of an opposite
pole of Christian feeling.

We cannot better introduce what
we have to say on the severity of punishments,
and the alleged callousness
of disposition in mediaeval times, and,
indeed, on Mr. Lecky's whole criticism
of the subject of eternal punishment,
than by a passage from a most able
writer:

  "One of the effects of civilization (not to say one of the ingredients in
  it) is, that the spectacle, and even the very idea, of pain, is kept more
  and more out of sight of those classes who enjoy in their full the
  benefits of civilization. The state of perpetual personal conflict,
  rendered necessary by the circumstances of former times, and from which
  it was hardly possible for any person, in whatever rank of society, to be
  exempt, necessarily habituated everyone to the spectacle of harshness,
  rudeness, and violence, to the struggle of one indomitable will against
  another, and to the alternate suffering  and infliction of pain. These
  things, consequently, were not as revolting even to the best and most
  actively benevolent men of former days, as they are to our own; and we
  find the recorded conduct of those men frequently such as would be
  universally considered very unfeeling in a person of our own day. They,
  however, thought less of the infliction of pain, because they thought
  less of pain altogether. When we read of actions of the Greeks and
  Romans, or of our own ancestors, denoting callousness to human suffering,
  we must not think that those who committed these actions were as cruel as
  we must become before we could do the like. The pain which they
  inflicted, they were in the habit of voluntarily undergoing from slight
  causes; it did not appear to them as great an evil as it appears, and as
  it really is, to us, nor did it in any way degrade their minds."
  [Footnote 27]

    [Footnote 27: J.S. Mill, Dissertations and Discussions; Art
    Civilization.]

{89}

The scale, in fact, according to which degrees of pain were computed, was
much less minute then than now. This arose from the imperfect subdivision
of labor in society, and the consequently more frequently recurring
necessity of personally putting forth powers of endurance and of action;
from the continual wars and commotions; from the imperfection of the
mechanical appliances which now alleviate suffering; from a sterner and
rougher manner of living, necessitated by the undeveloped state of the
social arts; from the intimate intermingling of the civil and the military
life, arising out of the feudal system; and from a multitude of other
causes. To these, however, we must add another of far more potent
influence. The inchoate mediaeval nations were only emerging from a state
of barbarism; and the associations of that barbarism still tenaciously
clung to them in the gloomy superstitions common among northern nations, in
cruel ordeals, in internecine warfare, in the whole texture of their social
and national traditions. The causes referred to by Mr. Mill were in
operation almost as much in the civilization of Greece and Rome as in the
middle ages; but this circumstance, which is one on which we need not
dilate, increased, and must have increased, to an enormous extent the
activity of the tendencies on which be remarks. If indeed, there were two
nations exactly alike in every particular, except that the one believed
eternal punishment and set small store by pain, so as severely and even
barbarously to punish offenses, while the other did neither of these
things--we should in that case plausibly assert a direct causal connexion
between holding the eternity of future punishment and a hardness and
callousness of temper. But we cannot argue in this free and easy manner,
where the instances from which we have to make our induction are so
multifariously different as are the social condition of the present day and
the social condition of mediaeval times. We must not thus arbitrarily
single one from out of a multitude of causes. Reasoning from the known
principles of human nature, we can say with all confidence that the causes
just enumerated must have operated, and operated very powerfully, to
produce many and severe punishments, the carelessness for and of suffering,
the trials by ordeal and by torture, which existed at the period of which
we write. And thus we also see that those representations of the torments
of the lost, on which Mr. Lecky expends such a vast amount of rhetoric,
must have produced these effects immeasurably less than they would now
produce; far more powerful means had to be resorted to then to produce an
amount of feeling for which gentler methods now suffice.

Nor has Mr. Lecky fairly represented the doctrine of eternal punishment in
itself. To contemplate the infliction of pain naturally produces, he says,
a callousness and hardness of feeling. This statement embodies only a half
truth, and the reasoning founded on it is in the highest degree fallacious.
When the Catholics of ancient times contemplated the anguish of the lost,
the habits which they endeavoured to form were habits of horror for the sin
which entailed that anguish. There is a great difference between thus
actively contemplating suffering, and beholding it merely in a passive
manner, and with a view to some other end. The surgical operator, the
public executioner, the soldier, who look at it in this latter light, may
and do in time become hardened and indifferent. But it is far otherwise in
the former case; and there is a great difference between reflecting on the
pains of others, and reflecting on the pains which may one day be our own.
It is reasonable and natural to suppose, and is found to be in reality the
case, that one who contemplates the sufferings of others merely and purely
as of others, and habitually avoids referring them in any way to himself,
will in the end become hard and cruel.
{90}
But the very essence of sympathy consists in an unconscious association of
ourselves with others in their sufferings. The Calvinist, therefore, the
believer in "assurance," who fancies himself to be one of the elect, and
from his security safely thinks of all the torments of the reprobate as
things in which it would be sinful for him even for a moment to imagine
that he can have part, may but grow callous at the thought of hell--may
even delight to think of it, and revel in the representation of the anguish
there. But such a spirit is altogether opposed to the whole bent of
Catholic meditation on that subject. The Catholic, when he meditates on
these torments, thinks of them as of others, only that the thought may more
vividly come home to himself; he thinks of them as of what he may one day
have to endure. And again, the thought of our own personal suffering can
make us hard and firm only when we consider it as a thing not to be
avoided, but to be braved. It is almost a truism to say, that those men are
of all the most soft and timid, who are continually representing to
themselves means of escape from vividly imagined dangers. And no Catholic
would meditate on these torments that he might nerve himself to brave them,
but that he might seek means to avoid them. Catholics, of course, accept,
on the ground of God's Word, that awful doctrine of our faith which we are
now contemplating. So far as they argue for it from reason at all, they say
that this doctrine is the necessary sanction of the moral law; and the
force of that argument will be felt by none more strongly than by Catholics
themselves, who, from holding the existence both of a future temporal and
of a future eternal punishment for sin, are better able to judge what
effects would be likely to be produced, if hell were, in the common
teaching, resolved into a kind of purgatory. But it must never be forgotten
that in the Catholic religion the doctrine of eternal punishment, is taught
under certain accompanying conditions, which intimately affect its
practical bearing. The first of these conditions is the doctrine of
purgatory, of which M. Comte thus speaks:

  Il serait facile de reconnaître que l'institution, si amèrement
  critiquée, du purgatoire fut, au contraire, très-heureusement introduite,
  dans la pratique sociale du Catholicisme, à titre d'indispensable
  correctif fondamental de l'eternité des peines futures; oar, autrement,
  cette éternité, sans laquelle les prescriptions religieuses ne pouvaient
  être efficaces, eût évidemment déterminé souvent ou un relâchement
  funeste, ou un effroyable désespoir, égalemeut dangereux l'un et l'autre
  pour l'individu et pour la société, et entre lesquels le génie Catholique
  est parvenu à organiser cette ingénieuse issue, qui permettait de graduer
  immédiatement, avec une scrupuleuse précision, l'application effective du
  procédé religieux aux convenances de chaque cas réel. [Footnote 28]

    [Footnote 28: Philosophie Positive, vol. v. p. 269 (Ed. 1864).]

In reading this quotation, it must be remembered that M. Comte was not a
Catholic, and regarded the Catholic Church as merely a human institution.
But, the truths to which that unhappy thinker here draws attention, are so
evident, that they hardly require proof. If the sole future punishment of
sin be believed to be an eternal punishment, such as is that of hell, it is
not difficult to perceive what effects will follow. The timid, and those
who are naturally religiously minded, will form a gloomy and austere notion
of religion, which will produce some of the effects noted by Mr. Lecky, and
in the end, by provoking a necessary reaction, work the destruction of all
religion whatever. Those, on the contrary, who are irreligiously inclined,
will be still further moved to give up all ideas of religion as
impracticable, and will be disgusted by its tone and spirit; while the
doctrine of eternal punishment will lose its force by being applied to
light and trivial offences.

But we must also notice another condition of the realization of this
doctrine; which is provided in the Catholic system; and which, like that of
purgatory, has been rather neglected by Protestantism.
{91}
It has been noticed by some writers that the sacramental system of the
church provides an admirable safeguard, and one in an especial manner
necessary in the middle ages, against outbreaks of fanaticism. According to
the teaching of the Catholic Church, the sacraments are the great means,
channels, and conditions of grace. And this produces a system and an order,
a definite method of procedure in the spiritual life, which, assisted by
the ascetical and mystical theology so minutely cultivated, abundantly
directs enthusiasm and represses fanaticism. And we do not doubt that if
Protestantism, with its doctrine of private judgment and private direction,
had been the form of Christianity existing in the middle ages, Christianity
would have sunk into a condition of which paganism and the Gnostic heresies
alone afford a parallel. But this sacramental system has also another,
though a co-ordinate effect. Grace is insensible and unfelt, to confound it
with the natural religious feelings and emotions is to make religion no
longer a discipline and a duty, but a sentiment. And because it is unfelt,
it is necessary that it should ordinarily be given through some external
and sensible rite, in order to ward off undue and pernicious doubt and
anxiety. Now, according to Catholic teaching, while, on the one hand, it is
impossible for any one to know with absolute certainty what is his
spiritual state before God; on the other hand, the doctrine of confession
and absolution supplies all with a means of knowing, with a greater of less
amount of probability, what their real condition is. On the morally
beneficial tendency of the first part of this teaching it is unnecessary to
dilate, and any scrupulosity or vain terror which, if it stood alone, it
might excite, is amply provided against by the second. And thus, through
the correlative doctrines of purgatory, of the consequent distinction
between mortal and venial sins, of confession and absolution, and by means
of its moral theology, Catholicism provides that the doctrine of eternal
punishment shall press with greater or less force, exactly as its influence
is more or less required. It does not leave the believer to the diseased
imaginations of his own mind, but provides an external code to which he
must submit, and an external direction by which he will be guided. It
provides a means by which he may know whether he is or is not in a state of
sin, and a definite remedy whereby he may extricate himself from it; while
it holds out a hope of salvation to all, and teaches that no man ever
existed whose case was so desperate that he could not, if he co-operated
with grace, as he has the power of co-operating, look for pardon. With the
heretical sects the case is widely different. The very name of Calvinism
calls up associations on which it would be painful to dwell. The
conjunction of the doctrines of eternal punishment and necessitarianism
must always, even where these doctrines are but to a very inadequate extent
realized, produce a type of religious thought and feeling as repulsive as
it is degrading. Of this it would be superfluous to speak. But
Protestantism repudiates the practice of confession and the doctrine of
absolution. Then, indeed, wherever the eternity of punishment was realized,
it produced a diseased and unhealthy state of mind. Anxiety, doubt, terror,
were necessarily the predominating feelings in the minds of men; an anxiety
which could be calmed no longer now that there was no confessional, and a
doubt which admitted of no direction now that each man had to be almost
entirely his own counsellor, while all were faltering and divided as to the
"direction of the ways of life." The "doctrine of final assurance" was,
indeed, put forward to remedy the evil. But that doctrine only served to
aggravate it. For to one class of minds it only supplied a new cause of
terror; and to another it gave a very fruitful occasion of cultivating a
disposition perhaps the most detestably proud, callous, and selfish, which
has ever appeared among mankind.

{92}

We must not, however, be supposed to deny that, through causes the
character of which may partially be gathered from the preceding remarks,
the doctrine of eternal punishment was very prominent in the middle ages.
And how, it will be asked, did the church of those ages meet this
extraordinary prominence? To have met it by merely insisting on the
blessedness of heaven, would obviously have been most inadequate. Our
natural constitution, and the circumstances of our life here, are such that
our ideas of happiness, and especially of permanent happiness, are, as it
has often been urged, far less definite and far less acute than our ideas
of pain; and for this reason it has been wisely brought about that what has
been made known to us of the blessedness of heaven is far less definite and
complete, than is what we know of the punishment of the wicked. But for
this very reason, the prominence of the doctrine of their eternal
punishment could not be efficaciously met by insisting on this blessedness.
But there is another set of ideas and feelings directly opposed to the
despair and unmitigated fear which would be produced by the sole
contemplation of the torments of the lost; and it is a set of ideas and
feelings which nowhere find so natural a home as in Catholicism. From the
manner in which the doctrine of the Incarnation is dwelt on in the Catholic
system, and from the consequently almost human character which is given to
the love of God and to the contemplation of the divine perfections as set
forth in Christ, there results an ardor, an intensity, an active continuity
of that love, which is simply incomprehensible to those who are external to
the machinery of the Catholic Church. If it be asked, then, how did the
church of those times meet the extraordinary, development of the doctrine
we have been considering, the answer is patent to the most superficial
reader of the mediaeval saints and theologians. They met it by an, at
least, equal development of the doctrine of divine love. St. Bernard, Hugo
of St. Victor, St. Anselm, all especially breathe in their works this sweet
and devout spirit. The writings of St. Bernard, and those passages of such
exquisitely tender devotion which occur in the writings of St. Augustine,
became, in particular, the texts on which succeeding writers expanded and
dilated. A spirit of meekness and tenderness of devotion, an intense and
fervid love of God, are the themes on which they peculiarly delight to
dwell, and the virtues on which they peculiarly love to insist. It was this
age that produced the Imitation; toward the close of it appeared the
Paradisus Animae: and whoever was the actual author of the former work, it
possesses remarkable affinity with the spirit and even the style of Gerson.
Nor was this temper of mind confined to purely mystical writers. The
writings of St. Francis of Assisi, of St. Bridget, St. Catherine of Sienna,
and others, attest, indeed, that the type of sanctity was, in some sense,
changing under its influence; but it passed on to the great theological
teachers of the age. St. Thomas of Aquino, the best and greatest of them
all, lived and struggled in the very midst of the conflict with infidelity
which was then agitating the church, and yet even he found time to write a
number of short spiritual treatises which display the most tender and the
most delicate devotion. This is especially seen in his book De Beatitudine.
Richard of St. Victor wrote a work De Gradibus Violentae Charitatis, "On
the degrees of violent charity." St. Bonaventure received the name of "The
Seraphic Doctor" from the ardor of his piety; the titles of a few of his
works--De Septem Itineribus AEternitatis, Stimulus Amoris, Amatorium,
Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum--will be sufficient to show its character. The
tender and loving spirit which those great doctors manifested in their
devotion, broke out also in their correspondence with their friends, as may
be perceived even from the extracts from the letters and sermons of certain
of them which the Count de Montalembert has inserted in his Monks of the
West.
{93}
Other momenta of a more general nature show the operation of the same
tendency. For the first time detailed lives of our blessed Lord came into
general circulation. Devotion to the passion assumed a far more prominent
position than before; of the spirit which animated it we have a most
touching example in the little book attributed to St. Juliana of Norwich.
The Canticle of Canticles suddenly took a place in the affections of the
pious, which even in the primitive church it had never known. St. Bernard
composed on it his celebrated Sermones super Cantica, St. Bonaventure and
Richard of St. Victor both wrote commentaries on it; St. Thomas has left us
two, and it was while dictating the second of these that he passed out of
this world, celebrating the blessedness of divine love. Nor can we
altogether omit to notice three devotions, two of which certainly exercised
a very considerable influence. In an age in which the spirit of love and
devotion to our blessed Lord had assumed such large proportions, in which
the doctrine of the Incarnation was for the first time completely treated
in a scientific manner, and in which the subject of original sin was more
profoundly investigated, and the questions concerning the Immaculate
Conception consequently began to be cleared up and to assume a definite
form and coherence, it was natural that a great devotion should manifest
itself to our Blessed Lady. And of the tendency and the effects of this
devotion Mr. Lecky has himself spoken. The character of the devotion to St.
Joseph, also, is sufficiently well known, and it was first, we believe,
treated at length by Albertus Magnus. Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament was
to an indefinite extent stimulated by the institution of the Feast of
Corpus Christi; and it, of a truth, is a devotion which of all others
breathes a spirit of tenderness and of love.

We can now only make a few concluding remarks. We have already given a
general estimate of the work, on a few points of which we have here
touched; for we considered it better to speak of two or three connected
subjects more fully, than to distract ourselves and our readers by flying
comments on the many and very diverse subjects there treated. We have only
explicitly to add what we have before implied, that we consider it a very
dangerous book. It is all the more dangerous, because Mr. Lecky is not a
furious fanatic; because of his spurious candor; because of his partial
admissions; because of his engaging style. And in an age like the present,
when the dogmatic principle is so bitterly attacked by those without, and
sits so lightly on the necks even of believers, it is exceedingly
dangerous. For, as was to be expected, it sets the dogmatic principle
utterly at defiance, and from beginning to end is a continued protest
against it. Mr. Lecky's idea of education, and his theory of the manner of
formation of religious opinions, are alike thoroughly opposed to it. In
education he would have the bare principles of morality only, as far as
possible, inculcated; dogma, as far as possible, excluded; and if any
amount of dogmatic teaching is unavoidably admitted, it is to be taught
only so as to rest as lightly as possible on the mind, and with the proviso
that the opinions then taught will have to be reconsidered in after life.
With respect to the formation of religious opinions, his book teaches a
kind of Hegelianism. Society is continually changing, and the best thing we
can do is to follow the most advanced minds in society. There is an
everlasting process, in which we can never be sure that we have definitely
attained to the truth. The end of this, of course, is to make all opinions
uncertain. We may know what we like best, or what the tendencies of society
incline it and us to believe; but we can never, as to religious opinions,
know what is objectively true.

{94}

It is not very difficult to discover what is the nature of this process
which is called rationalism. In former times the religious spirit
predominated over the secular; but from a variety of causes, and in
particular on account of the immense development of secular science since
the time of Bacon and Descartes, the secular scientific spirit has since
predominated over the religious. And rationalism is merely one of the
results of this predominance; a consequence of the application to religious
subjects of secular habits of thought. This may manifest itself, now in one
way, now in another; in the denial now of transubstantiation, now of the
doctrine of the Trinity; but its root and origin is the same: it tends (and
this quite takes the romance out of it) to the elimination of the religious
ideas, and it is strengthened by whatever strengthens what we have called
the secular scientific, or weakens the religious, spirit. Hence that
dislike of authority and that over-clouding of the moral character of
religious truth; hence that distaste for the miraculous and the mysterious,
and that tendency to put into the background, and even to deny, the
doctrine of grace; and if the internal wants of those who have just
"escaped from the wilderness of Christianity, and still have some of the
thorns and brambles sticking to their clothes," make it necessary that
something should be substituted for that which is being taken away--a
baseless and often unreal sentimentalism is substituted for honest
religious duty and earnest devotion. It is only too much to be feared that
the world will educate itself out of this also; and that, in the case of
those who refuse submission to the Catholic Church, the secular spirit will
more and more grow toward its full ascendancy, and therefore toward a total
extinction of the already weakened religious ideas.

-------

  Original.

  A DREAM.


  A procession passed by in my fitful dreams,
  So strange that it now like a nightmare seems.
  I beheld a long line of wifeless men
  Whom their living wives might claim again.
  And widows and orphans who never gave
  Husband or parent up to the grave.
  In the hands of each of this motley train
  Was a broken heart and a broken chain:
  And a veil hung down over every face
  Hiding the shame of a deep disgrace.
  A figure they bore on a funeral bier,
  Of a form that belonged to another sphere.
  Not a line of humanity could I trace
  In its ghastly, shadowy, hideous face.
  From its jaws came a noisome, poisonous breath,
  That hung o'er the bier like the mist of death;
  Then spread like a pestilence through the air,
  And husbands and wives standing here and there

{95}

  Its magical circle of mischief within--
  Opened their mouths and sucked it in.
  Then, straightway, like beasts, grovelled prone in the dust,
  Burning with jealousy, anger, and lust.
  I marvelled to see as I looked again
  All these were now widows and wifeless men.
  In their hands, like those in the funeral train,
  Was the broken heart and the broken chain.
  And as the strange throng passed hurriedly by,
  They chanted this dirge with a savage cry:

      Dig its grave deep.
    Hide it well out of sight,
    Lest it come to the light,
    And our hearths and homes smite
    With a curse and a blight.
      Dig its grave deep.

      Dig its grave deep.
    Lest its treacherous smile
    May our reason beguile;
    Lest its rottenness vile
    May the nation defile.
      Dig its grave deep.

      Dig its grave deep.
    For lust and for gold
    It has bartered and sold
    All that dearest we hold;
    Let its death-knell be tolled.
      Dig its grave deep,

      Dig its grave deep.
    The land has been rife
    With its bloodshed and strife
    Between husband and wife.
    Crush, crush out its life.
      Dig its grave deep.

      Dig its grave deep.
    It has stood by the side.
    Of bridegroom and bride
    Whom it meant to divide,
    And their troth falsified.
      Dig its grave deep.

      Dig its grave deep.
    It feedeth on lies.
    It breaketh all ties;
    And all innocence dies
    'Neath the glance of its eyes.
      Dig its grave deep.

{96}

      Dig its grave deep.
    'Tis an offspring of shame
    Deserving no name;
    From the devil it came,
    To return to the same.
      Dig its grave deep.

      Dig its grave deep.
    'Tis a curse and a bane:
    Its touch is profane;
    And brings sorrow and pain
    In its murderous train.
      Dig its grave deep.

      Dig its grave deep.
    'Tis a damning disgrace
    To a people or race,
    Who there nature abase
    To give this thing place.
      Dig its grave deep.

      Dig its grave deep.
    Pile earth, rocks, and stones
    On its festering bones:
    Naught for it atones:
    Hell its parentage owns.
      Dig its grave deep.

  As I looked once again on what funeral bier,
  My limbs became rigid through horror and fear;
  For the hideous form breathed its breath in my face,
  And spreading its arms to invite an embrace,
  Beckoned me on with an ominous nod;
  I cried, Fiend, avaunt! in the name of God!
  And awoke.--On that bier I had seen the foul corse
  Of the scourge of our country, THE LAW OF DIVORCE.

{97}

  Original.

  A Talk About Paris.
  By An Old Bachelor.

So much has been said, written, thought, and exaggerated about Paris, that
little remains to be said, written, thought, or exaggerated about it.
Still, keeping clear of the broad road reserved to guide-books and
travellers, I flatter myself that a comfortable, easy chat about it and its
inhabitants, may not be unwelcome to my friends across the broad Atlantic.

If you hope some day to visit this great city--and what American does not
cherish that hope?--pray that that day may not be made a dark one by the
unceasing rain, and slippery, sloshy mud, which often usher in the winter.
No place so wretched as Paris in the rainy season; elsewhere one may make
up one's mind philosophically to india rubbers, umbrellas, and the blues,
but here it seems a sort of personal insult when the sun does not shine,
and brighten the long rows of while houses. Was not Paris made for
enjoyment, light-heartedness, and sunshine? At this season, it is not
unfrequent to hear visitors, with a grave shake of the head, declare that
they are really quite disappointed; that it is not at all what they had
expected, and that other places are much more interesting. They quarrel
with the emperor for his great work of regenerating and beautifying the
Paris of crooked, narrow, but picturesque memory. The changes he has
wrought are indeed marvellous; and though he may well grumble at the
wholesale destruction of old places, and also at the discomfort attendant
on constant pulling down and building up, yet the unprejudiced traveller
cannot but stand amazed at all that has been done during one man's reign,
and also feel a certain degree of gratitude for the comfort of wide,
well-paved streets, and well-built modern houses.

My first visit to Paris was some twenty years ago, when I was sent on my
travels, before settling down to a hum-drum law office. I remember well
many quaint nooks and corners, which I look for in vain now. Among other
places, I see in my mind's eye a certain queer old tavern restaurant, famed
for its English dishes, its gray-haired waiters, and its cheapness; it
stood in Rue St. Lazarre, at the head of the Chaussée d'Antin, a wide and
populace thoroughfare. Here, escaping from my establishment "de garçon"
hard by, I used to find myself at about six o'clock waiting for my slice of
"Ros bif." Well I remember the old room, with its comfortable half light,
and white-covered tables; well, too, do I remember the old gentleman who
invariably took the cosiest nook, and secured the paper over which he
invariably dozed; and the student of medicine who carved his chicken with a
skill that made my blood run cold. But more vividly than all do I remember
a young countryman of mine, an artist, with his English wife, a young
girlish creature, who particularly interested me; they seemed so happy,
made so light of that hard struggle with poverty--which so often turns the
strength of young men to despair, and the love of young wives to sourness--
that I made an effort, notwithstanding my shyness, to become acquainted
with them. We have been friends ever since, and as I write, the young
artist, having conquered in the battle of life, is both known and respected
in his native country; as to his wife, though she certainly is no longer
girlish, she is as merry as ever, surrounded by her bevy of grown and
growing daughters.

{98}

Remembering all these things, one of my first excursions was to this place,
hoping to live these memories over again, and thereby perhaps to feel young
once more. But I looked in vain; on the very spot where the humble
restaurant stood, towers at this moment a beautiful new church, with wealth
of statues and ornaments; it is called "La Ste. Trinité," and is the pride
of the neighborhood. But I looked at its highly decorated white façade with
a feeling of disappointment. I should so have liked another slice of that
famed "Ros Bif!" Everybody has heard about the boulevards of Paris,
encircling the city, and intersecting it in every direction, giving it
fresh air and beauty. Every one, too, has heard of the straight new
avenues, radiating from the Arc de Triomphe like rays from a sun, and of
the manifold new streets which have swallowed up so many old ones; and,
above all, of the wonderful opera house, which stands just opposite Rue de
la Paix, and which is to be one of the wonders of the world. I have heard
and read that it is almost finished, therefore conclude that it is my own
want of perceptive powers which makes it still appear to me like a huge,
uniform mass; lately, however, through the breaks in the scaffolding I have
perceived parts nearly finished, with ornaments of color and white marble,
and from these glimpses I conclude that when the time comes, I shall be
able to indulge in the ecstasies of admiration expected from all beholders
of this mammoth enterprise.

But all this is not Paris, Paris of olden times, of history; it is
beautiful, but it is terribly new, and the old fogies of the Faubourg St.
Germain, emerging from their narrow streets, shake their heads at the broad
new avenues, with their unmitigated straightness and meaningless
uniformity.

The other night I went to hear a play now much in vogue, called La Maison
Neuve, a capital satire on this "Nouveau Paris," and full of local hits.
But why should I attempt to tell you anything about it? Americans know
everything about everything, and probably while you are reading this, The
New House is figuring in large letters on the play bills at Wallack's, and
managers "out West" are conning over the possibilities of adapting this
nice little tid-bit of novelty to their stage. All the French shading, all
the palpable hits, will, alas! be made limpingly to apply to New-York,
Chicago, St. Louis, etc. We are a great people, there is no doubt; but do
we not, sometimes, in our great hurry to be ahead of everybody else, make
little mistakes? In a recent conversation with some French friends, I
mentioned that La Famille Benoiton was figuring East and West. "Mais
comment! how can they understand it? even Frenchmen, if not Parisians,
would have difficulty! mais c'est impayable." I quietly replied that we
were a great nation, which is a convenient answer on many occasions; but
between ourselves, is it not a pity that we do not aim at a little
originality? that we must ape Paris quite so much?

But, to return to La Maison Neuve. It was hissed at first, its satire was
perhaps a little too piquant; but some of the thorns being removed, it
blooms in glory, and Frenchman clap furiously at the merciless cutting up
of Boulevard Malesherbes, and the upstart fashions of young France. From
what I have seen and observed, I fancy the play is an exaggerated, but on
the whole a tolerably faithful picture of modern French life, with its want
of depth, its tinsel, its sham, and its immorality. But let us leave the
theatre--though the charming, light, natural acting, which we heavier
Americans cannot imitate, make it wonderfully attractive--in turn once more
to Paris streets.

{99}

After all, life is not in the houses, or rather slices of houses, which
people call apartments, but in the streets. At this season, one does not
feel astonished at it; every body, even the rheumatic old bachelor, feels
tempted to leave the smoky chimney--why do French chimneys always
smoke?--and wander up and down peering into all the shop windows, with
their wealth of beautiful things, tempting one to buy a Christmas or New
Year's gift for every body under the sun. We must acknowledge that our
cousins of France have a most wonderful art of displaying their merchandise
to the best advantage. Did anyone ever imagine anything more seductive than
a French confectioner's? It is really dangerous to pass the establishments
of Boissier and others on the Boulevard, with their beautiful display of
boxes, caskets, vases, and quaintly dressed figures of grand ladies, etc.,
all filled with delicious bonbons. As to the toys, there is positive genius
displayed in these pleasures of a moment; indeed, these shop-keepers are
not only artists, they are satirists. Approach, dear ladies, look at these
dolls, and sigh for fashion, if you can; these unimaginable gew-gaws, these
extraordinarily long robes, which give the dear creatures the appearance of
being half on the floor, and half above it, these--these ... but I lack the
milliner vocabulary, or I would stun you with the etceteras; then the turn
of the head, the stare through the miniature eye-glass, and the little
curly dog led by a ribbon! Messieurs the shop-keepers! I bow to you, you
are greater satirists even than those sharp-penned writers of a certain New
York literary review.

The other day, having reached the upper part of the Boulevard, near the
Porte St. Dennis, I could not but stop and gaze down that long stream of
human life which lay before me; not a particle of the pavement was to be
seen, nothing but a living mass of bustling, pushing, quarreling humanity.
All classes, all ages, almost all countries, were there. Men in blouses.
and men in broad-cloth; beggars and nobles; innocent children, and men with
the inevitable marks of an ill-spent life on care-worn faces; silk attired
dames, and white-capped _bonnes_; loud-voiced ladies with unimaginable
boots, and the shortest possible walking dresses; anxious mothers trying in
vain to keep their excited little ones from running against portly
gentlemen, or loaded _commissionaires_. Fancy all this, with a Babel
of German, Italian, Spanish, and much more frequent English, with the noise
of street organists and Italian harpists, the screaming of itinerant
merchants, the dashing of carriages, the swearing of drivers, and you will
have some idea of the scene. As I stood in a sheltered nook observing, I
could not but think of Kribble Krabble, Hans Andersen's philosopher, who
showed his friend what seemed to be a city full of fighting, devouring
monsters, in a drop of water. I wonder if from those quiet stars, so calm
and pure, this busy scene does not also appear like that drop of ditch
water; whether some beings gifted with a penetrating vision denied to us,
do not see into the true natures of this elbowing host, and weep over the
monsters of cruelty, of cunning, of hypocrisy, of degradation
disclosed--inevitable adjuncts of a large city. Let us look again; we, less
gifted, see only beings one much like the other, all seemingly busy in
enjoying the gay scene around them, eagerly prying into the glittering
shops, or passing quickly by the thousand booths that during Christmas week
transform the street into a real Vanity Fair. They laugh, chat, seem happy,
and surely to be happy one must be innocent! Let us believe them so; let us
pass on, brushing by yon gaudily dressed woman, yon sinister-eyed man, and
thank heaven that we are not cursed with the magical glass of Kribble
Krabble. After all, do not those slashing satirists do more harm than good,
in bringing so vividly to the light of day things that might as well be
kept in the background? Is it not better philosophy to shut one's eyes to
much that passes around one, at this season especially, for it is Christmas
time, when there should be peace on earth?

{100}

Speaking of Christmas, reminds me to speak of the churches, which I have as
yet neglected. Paintings, engravings, and photographs have already made the
outside of these churches familiar to you, therefore I will not dwell on
that branch of the subject. Notre Dame, grand old Gothic Notre Dame, is on
an island in the Seine. It seems to look down, in its grandeur, on both old
and new Paris. On one side it seems sadly to recall the bloody memories of
years gone by; the rise and downfall of dynasties; the rise and downfall of
families still sheltered in the old streets of the old St. Germain quarter;
the death of the old _régime_, the breaking of hearts. On the other
hand, it seems to frown on gorgeous new Paris; on the beautiful panorama of
buildings along the bank of the river, the Tuileries, the Louvre, the Hotel
de Ville, etc., and beyond these, scores of new white buildings, and the
ruins of others, comparatively new, which are to give place to still finer
ones. The old church, with its quaintly carved monsters and old towers,
seems to stand as a warning of the time that is to come, when all these
great works of man shall be but vanity, and as chaff. This is a solemn
church, as it should be, and gloom seems to dwell in its lofty arches.

It is the Madeleine, the beautiful, bright Madeleine, which seems to be the
favorite church of the Parisians. It was here that, with great difficulty,
I found a seat on Christmas morning. As I entered the services had begun,
and a beautifully clear boy's voice was holding a high note, while a full
orchestral band was playing the accompaniment. The church was crowded, and
I noticed that a great many Protestants, both English and American, were
present. I have heard much and read much of the impropriety and want of
respect evinced by these in sacred places, but, except for a little more
staring, and perhaps some little more whispering, their conduct, as far as
I could observe, did not differ essentially from that of their Catholic
neighbors. In these large churches there is always an amount of bustle, and
a want of reverence, which, to an American Catholic, is, I confess, very
shocking. The constant coming in and going out is occasioned, in some
degree, by the fact that often, during high mass, several low masses are
going on at the side altars; but still the want of reverence evinced by
numbers and numbers of these French Catholics, is a fact too apparent to be
denied. I do not mean to say that I have not observed many who seemed to
realize what was going on before them, but most of these had "old
_régime_" written on their faces. With young France it is the fashion
to doubt, to scoff, or to be utterly indifferent, and who dares to disobey
fashion? But let us return to the ceremony.

The altar of this famed church has often been described. The marble group
above it is singularly beautiful, it represents Mary Magdalen, supported by
angels; the figures are of heroic size, and of the purest white marble. At
this altar ministered a large number of golden-robed priests, surrounded by
a bevy of boys in scarlet and white. Had I, too, been a Protestant,
ignorant of the deep and holy meaning hidden under these symbols, and
seeing in them but the glitter of gold and rich colors, I dare say I
should, like them, have pronounced it but a gorgeous show, a theatrical
display; as it was, my thoughts flew eagerly back to a certain well
remembered chapel across the Atlantic, where I had often assisted at the
same ceremony performed with a simplicity and devotion which contrasted
pleasingly with this grand high mass at the Madeleine. Persecution and
poverty are wonderful safeguards to the virtue of man; they are, perhaps,
also necessary to the perfection of churches. Religion--faith--must always
remain pure, but the professors thereof may easily be influenced by the
accidents of wealth and splendor.
{101}
While making these reflections, and indoctrinating myself with charity
toward our Protestant brethren, the mass went on, and the really beautiful
music filled the lofty church. But there was something discordant to my
ears in the harmony of the violins and brass instruments; to my mind the
organ alone, that most holy of instruments, is worthy of ministering to the
service of God. Still, the music was beautiful, and after all true music is
always sacred; and when at the elevation the loud instruments held their
breath, and a rich barytone voice alone was heard, I had to confess that,
whatever its surroundings, religion and religious spirit are always to be
found by him who really seeks them.

Remember, also, that I have been talking of the Madeleine, which is
essentially the worldly church of Paris. At St. Roch, situated in Rue St.
Honoré, and from whose steps the blood-thirsty crowd jeered at Marie
Antoinette as she was being led to the Place de la Concorde, where stood
the awful guillotine; at Notre Dame de Lorette, and many others, there is
less glitter, less parade, and apparently more devotion. At St. Roch, the
beautifully trained choir of boys, and the good music given, attract many
Protestants; still the feeling of the church is more Catholic than that of
the Madeleine. Here, as elsewhere, I was struck by the vast number of
priests in the sanctuary. I thought of our own overworked, faithful
priests, and could not help wondering whether a little of their hard work
would not be good for those before me.

As I look over what I have written I find that there is no small amount of
grumbling and fault-finding in the foregoing pages; I smile to myself as I
discover that I have fallen into the little peculiarity which I have so
often noticed in my countrymen and countrywomen in Paris: that of finding
fault. No American, or Englishman either, whom you may question, will utter
ten words on the subject, without abusing the French. "There's no trust to
be put in them; they are a lying, mean set," are among the mildest
accusations poured forth; and there certainly is some truth in the charges.
Americans, with the people at large, are a flock of rich fools, sent over
by their lucky stars, on purpose to be fleeced; consequently all the
tradespeople you employ, your servants and their ally the _concierge_,
invariably ask you about double as much as they would ask a Frenchman, and
laugh at you while pocketing your gold. The art of cheapening things, so
well understood by the people here, is a new experience to you. You do not
like to walk into a handsome shop and offer half the price asked for an
article, you are not accustomed to it, feel awkward; all of which the wily
shopman sees well enough, and, of course, you end by giving the price
required. But that French lady next to you, so handsomely dressed, does not
hesitate an instant; you think she at least would have disdained that art
of the _bourgeoisie_; not a bit of it; she insists, the clerk, bowing
much more respectfully than he did to you, wraps up the article, and the
lady sails out in triumph.

But for all this, Americans seem to find wondrous charms in this city, and
prolong their stay for one month to two, then to six, and not unfrequently
rush back to New York, settle up their affairs, and return to live here
permanently, despising the French more and more every year, of course! At
this present moment, if all our countrymen and countrywomen, now residing
here, were suddenly transplanted to the western prairies, they would form
quite a respectable sized city, which would, according to the invariable
western custom, begin to defy its sister cities to show a bigger figure
when the census came to be taken. But I fancy very few of these Americans,
if the question were put to them, would be willing thus to be transported
for the good of their country. We are undoubtedly a very patriotic people;
but we believe, most devoutly, that charity begins at home.
{102}
Among these same countrymen of ours I notice the names of a number of
well-known artists, who, I understand are well thought of in the artistic
world. It is pleasant to hear them praised by our cousins of France, but I
cannot help thinking that America, still so young in art, can ill spare her
gifted children.

Talking of artists, let me tell you of a sad little incident that came
under my own observation. We are all dimly conscious that poverty,
sometimes in its direst aspect, harasses the beginning or nearly all artist
lives. We have heard that N., whose beautiful picture drew crowds at the
last exhibition, and who cannot fulfil all the commissions that pour in
upon him--that the same man, not many years ago, might have starved but
for the aid of his fellow students; we know this, but, surrounded by
comforts and luxuries, it is the hardest thing in the world to realize
poverty. We walk the streets, brush by numbers of ragged women, throw a
copper to a bare-footed little beggar, but how often do we in our thoughts
follow those poor creatures to the hovels or garrets or cellars which serve
them as homes? how little we can imagine the cold and damp which chill
their bones, or the hunger which gnaws them! Still less do we realize, I
think, that beings with the education and feelings of gentlemen, should
have to endure these same horrors. I have before my mind, as I write, the
face of a young man, an enthusiast in his art, who, while engaged on a long
dreamt-of, cherished work, found that in consequence of the war in America,
the supplies on which he had calculated gave out. What to do? abandon his
work, his career perhaps? return beggared to his native western town,
without the promised work which was to show that his time had not been
wasted? Never, better starve! and starve he actually would have done, but
for the help of a student friend, almost as poor as himself, who shared his
daily loaf with him; and so the young man finished his picture, took it
over to America, where artists who saw it, seeing that it showed more than
ordinary talent, bestirred themselves, and making up a sufficient sum, sent
the young man back to his studies, feeling sure that the world would hear
of him some day. But I am wondering, let us return to Paris, and to the
incident which I was about to relate.

Some few weeks ago I was invited to dinner by some friends settled here for
the winter. The meeting was a pleasant one, and I left the brilliantly
lighted, handsome rooms with a pleasing glow over me, a reflection perhaps
from the good cheer which both mind and body had enjoyed. As I was passing
the inevitable _concierge_ lodge, the Cerberus kennel of every French
house, I was stopped by the sound of plaintive voice, and looking around I
saw a little girl, a child of some ten years, pleading evidently for some
great favor with the gruff _concierge_ himself, who, notwithstanding
all his decided negative shakes of the head, seemed to be struggling with a
certain degree of pity. The child was wretchedly dressed, and her little
hands were blue with cold, but in her upturned, pitifully old child's face,
there was a certain look of refinement that struck me. I approached and
asked what the matter was.

"Ah, pardon, monsieur! it is not of my fault; orders you see must be
obeyed, and the landlord ..."

Then he told me the story. It seemed that a month or two before he had been
a witness to the turning out from a miserable hole of a poor family; the
father called himself an artist, poor devil! his wife had a baby in her
arms, and there was a little girl. Seeing their utter distress, and
remembering a couple of miserable rooms dignified by the name of
"Appartements de garçon," but which did not let easily as they were dark
and uncomfortable, he had asked the landlord to allow them to occupy them
temporarily.
{103}
Shortly afterward the poor wife, a delicate, consumptive creature, died;
the baby did not survive her many hours, and the two were buried at the
expense of the parish, "But now it is impossible that they stay longer, the
rooms are let, and they must leave. What will you? monsieur perceives that
it is not of my fault." Monsieur feels a pang cut to his very heart. In
that same house, where such a short time since he was feasting and
laughing, a weary heart, perhaps, was breaking, and a young child
struggling with sorrow that made it old.

I asked the man if I might be allowed to see this unfortunate artist, and I
saw the child's face brighten as she slipped from his side to mine. I took
her hand and we went up, not the broad, handsome staircase which led to my
friends' apartments, but a dingy flight of stairs at the back of the court.
I was quite out of breath when we at last reached the door of this
"appartement de garçon." The child ran in, crying out: "Papa, papa I voici
an monsieur qui vient te voir."

A man dressed in miserable, ragged clothes, with a pitiful remnant of
gentility about him, was sitting at a rickety white wood table, his face
buried in his poor, thin hands, which I noticed were white and finely
shaped. At the sound of his child's voice be hastily got up, and seeing me,
bowed and offered me the only chair in the room, with a grace worthy of a
drawing room. I felt the tears well up to my eyes as I looked at this poor
wreck, and thought to myself how many dead hopes and dead aspirations lay
buried on that heart. I did not accept the chair, but held out my hand.
Something in the simple action, or in my face, perhaps, expressed the
sympathy I felt; it was too much for the poor man; be threw himself on the
bed sobbing convulsively; you see he was weakened by hunger and cold and
sickness. I put some money in the _concierge's_ hand, and he left us,
bowing respectfully.

When I turned I saw that the child had thrown herself by the side of her
father; he was moaning, but the sobs had already ceased. I felt his
forehead and hands, and found that he was in a raging fever. I looked
around, the place was miserable enough, and utterly unfit to be a sick
room. The _concierge_ shall be gratified, thought I, they shall leave
to-night; and sending the little girl out for a carriage, I was left alone
with my patient.

His face was much flushed, his eyes wild, and all my efforts to keep him
quiet were vain; I was obliged to let him talk. I soon gathered his whole
history from his incoherent words. There was nothing very new in it, it was
the old story of a respectable father, with a prejudice against the fine
arts; of a weary struggle first for fame, and then, forsooth, for bread; of
a foolish marriage with a girl as poor as himself, of children born to want
and misery, of unappreciated talent, etc. There was an unfinished picture
on the easel, and several others about the room; the poor man's eager eye
followed my movement as I looked at them, and he sank back comforted as I
praised his works. Heaven forgive, the charitable falsehoods! for that
glance sufficed to show me that I was comforting one of those wretched
beings who had just talent enough to conceive great things, without the
power of executing them, which is about the saddest of sad states.

The child soon returned, and I caused my poor invalid to be transported to
the Hotel Dieu, until I could make some other arrangement for him; his
little girl I put under the care of an honest woman who lived hard by,
where she slept; the days she spent by her poor father's bed. That bed he
never left, the hard struggle had been too much for him; the death of his
wife and child had been too severe a blow to the weak, loving, unfortunate
man. Brain fever soon declared itself and one dark, sad December day, his
little daughter and I followed his poor coffin to the nearest cemetery. The
child was very quiet, but her tearless eyes were unutterably sad.

{104}

I interested my friends in the sad story, and no happy mother, as she drew
her own dear ones to her heart, refused to help this bereaved one. So, we
made up a purse for her, and the other day I took her to a good school
where she is to remain until she is old enough to support herself, poor
little orphan! As I was about to leave her, she turned and said in her
quiet, undemonstrative way, a few words which I shall not put down here,
but which caused me to turn toward the door rather quickly, and to pretend
that I had a bad cold in my head.

This is no mere fancy sketch; I only wish it were a solitary instance.
Alas! for the poor in this great, rich, bustling, worldly city! But we must
bid adieu to it, with its delights, its wonderful sights, its wild
merriment, and its dumb misery. Adieu to it, and to you, my readers, a
happy, happy New-Year!


-------

    Original.

    Dr. Bacon On Conversions To The Catholic Church. [Footnote 29]

      [Footnote 29: A Roman Philosopher. A Review of an Article on
      Conversion in The Catholic World. By Rev. Dr. Bacon of Yale College.
      "New Englander." January, 1867.]


We embrace the opportunity of saying a few words on the topics of
controversy which have been started between the author of the article which
appeared in our columns on the "Philosophy of Conversion" and his
distinguished opponent; not with the view of following up the line of
attack opened by our able corresponded; but rather, in order to express our
own independent judgment, as a reviewer, on the question discussed, in some
of its important bearings.

Minor questions and side issues we leave to the opinions of those who have
read both sides, and we do not intend to meddle with them ourselves. The
gentleman attacked by Dr. Bacon has presented his view of what
Protestantism is, reduced to its logical elements and constitutive
principles. His opponent says: "I do not recognize that which you describe
as genuine Protestantism." This is all very fair. But he proceeds to infer
that the "Roman philosopher," as he designates the author of the essay in
question, either does not know what Protestantism is, or wilfully
misrepresents it. The doctor also, in turn, attempts to make a statement of
Catholic doctrine, as it appears to his mind, when reduced to its logical
elements. We, on our part, do not recognize this as a true representation.
We might, therefore, with just as much reason recriminate upon Dr. Bacon
his own accusations. We shall not do this, however; if for no other reason,
because these mutual recriminations in controversy are useless. Those who
love the truth can have no motive for misrepresenting the belief and
opinions of any class of men. Sincere Catholics and sincere Protestants
must alike desire that the principles and grounds of both Catholicity and
Protestantism should be placed in the clearest light possible and discussed
upon their naked merits, with as little mixture as may be of questions
concerning the intellectual or moral qualifications of individuals.

The original and genuine religion of New-England was the Calvinistic
Congregationalism of the Puritans, which still survives, with more or less
of modifications among the Orthodox Congregationalists, and has its
principal seat at New-Haven. The temper and tone of mind prevailing among
the clergy and members of this denomination place them at an extremely
remote distance from the Catholic mind, and make any interchange of thought
between the two very difficult.
{105}
With the exception of a slight movement started, without much effect that
we have ever heard of, by the learned and accomplished Dr. Woods, at
Bowdoin College, there has been no tendency in this body of the clergy to
return to any higher church principles than those of the Protestant
Episcopal denomination. It is this latter body which is the medium of
contact between the Catholic Church and the remoter Protestant bodies. It
has therefore first felt the effect of the increased inter-communication of
thought and influence between the two great divisions of Western
Christendom which is characteristic of our time. It is the hierarchical
principle, distinguishing this body from other Protestant communions, upon
which the influence of the Catholic church has been felt, and most of the
controversy has taken this principle as its starting-point. Of course,
therefore, it is in a great measure irrelevant to the question as it stands
between us and the non-episcopal communions, whether these are what is
called evangelical, or liberal, in their theology. We are disposed,
therefore, in addressing members of these communions to give the
_transeat_ to the whole Oxford controversy, and to allow them to think
what they please of the causes which have produced the current setting from
Anglicanism toward Rome. The controversy as between us has to be commenced
_de novo_, and to be carried on upon an entirely different basis.
Circumstances over which neither of us have any control, make this
controversy inevitable. We will confine ourselves, for the present, in
order to simplify the question, to the relations existing between Catholics
and Congregationalists in the State of Connecticut. We say, then, that
these relations make a controversy between us inevitable, just as much as
other circumstances and relations have made it inevitable between Anglicans
and Catholics in England and the United States. The reason of this
necessity is, that we have so many things in common, and so many points of
difference, that we cannot remain quiescent toward each other, except from
isolation in distinct communities, or from mutual apathy to the interests
of Christianity. Forty years ago, when Dr. Bacon was commencing his long
and distinguished career as a pastor in New-Haven, the question of
Catholicity had but little living and present interest for a Connecticut
theologian. It was a question of by-gone ages and distant countries. There
was not a Catholic in New-Haven, and there were few, if any, in the state,
excepting a small handful at Hartford, where the first feeble parish was
collected in a small frame church, purchased by Bishop Fenwick from Bishop
Brownell and dragged on rollers to a new site. We believe there were no
Catholics at that time in Rhode-Island; there were none in Vermont, Maine
or New-Hampshire. There were a few thousands in Massachusetts, mostly
congregated in Boston. The Bishop of Boston, whose diocese included all
New-England, had hardly half a dozen churches besides his very modest
cathedral, or more than a dozen priests. When the saintly Cheverus went to
Boston, his only cathedral was an old barn. As a matter of course, then,
the Catholic religion was looked upon merely as the religion of a few poor
immigrants, a bit of wreck from the institutions of the middle ages cast on
the New-England shore by the caprice of the waves. This habit of looking at
the matter has remained to a great extent unchanged, on account of the
almost complete social segregation of the rapidly increasing Catholic
community. That it cannot remain unchanged, however, is evident to
everyone. There are now fifty priests, one hundred congregations, four
religious orders, and a population of 75,000, belonging to the Catholic
Church in Connecticut. Although, therefore, isolation has rendered the
professors of the traditional religion of the State in a great measure
indifferent to the religion of this new element in the population, thus
far, it cannot continue; and this is apparent from Dr. Bacon's own
statements and views, as expressed in his article.
{106}
Apathy is also out of the question, especially as regards the clergy. It is
evident that the religious and moral doctrines and teachings of the pastors
of one fifth of the people of the State cannot be a matter of apathetic
indifference to anyone who takes an interest in the religious and moral
welfare of his fellow citizens. It follows then, necessarily, that the
leading clergy and theologians of the Congregational body in Connecticut
must engage with great application and industry in the study of the
Catholic system of doctrine and polity, not in second-hand works, but at
the original and authentic sources. They must pay attention also to the
cotemporary Catholic literature, both in the English and in foreign
languages. Studying and thinking on these topics, they will necessarily
write, speak, and converse upon them, and thus the same topics will engage
the attention of of all their brethren in the clerical profession, and of
the intelligent laity. We, on our part, cannot be indifferent to anything
written or spoken by men of learning and high position on the great topics
of religion. Consequently, we say, there must be controversy between us. In
point of fact, a little preliminary controversy has already commenced
between ourselves and the organ of the New-Haven literati.

We will not indulge in any premature gratulations over victories we may
hope to gain for the Catholic cause in controversy with the
Congregationalists, or conversions which may be looked for from among their
ranks. We shall on both sides agree that the truth is likely to prevail in
the end, and that whatever conquests truth may make redound more to the
honor and advantage of the vanquished than of the victors. In expressing
our satisfaction that this controversy is inevitable, we do not intend to
indicate a desire for a _polemical_ controversy in the rigorous sense
of the word. We do not wish to see the Catholic and Protestant pulpits
waging a theological artillery duel against each other; or a violent strife
for mastery, with all the bitter, hostile feelings which it engenders,
inaugurated between the Catholic and Protestant portions of the population.
On the contrary, we have particularly in view in what we are writing at
present, to bring forward certain considerations tending in an entirely
opposite direction. We desire, so far as our humble influence extends, to
forestall controversy of the sort alluded to, and to point out what we
conceive to be the true spirit and manner in which both sides should
approach the subject of the differences which unhappily divide us.

There are two ways in which we may carry on controversy. One way is, for
each side to place its own exclusive truth and right in the strongest
light, to affirm its doctrines in its own peculiar phraseology in the most
positive and dogmatic manner, and to take a position as far remote from
that of the other side, and as unintelligible to its opponents as possible;
moreover, to take the worst and most unfavorable view possible of the
doctrines and positions of the other side, and to impute to them all the
most extreme consequences of their principles which seem to ourselves to
follow logically from them.

Another way, is to conduct controversy, not from the two opposite extremes
of doctrine where the differences is widest and most palpable, but from
those middle terms in which both parties agree, and in relation to which
they are intelligible to each other. From these middle terms we may proceed
to the extremes, and thus endeavor to settle the points in which we differ,
by the aid of those in which we agree. The points of difference also, may
be perhaps reduced by mutual explanations, and a substantial agreement be
proved to exist in some doctrines where there is an apparent contradiction
in the terms used to express them.

{107}

In point of fact, these terms of agreement are numerous, and include the
most fundamental articles of the Catholic faith. The trinity, the
incarnation, the redemption, original sin, the regenerating, sanctifying
grace of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection and eternal life; the necessity
of repentance for sin, and of good works, the canonicity of the principal
books of the Old Testament, and of all those of the New Testament, their
divine inspiration, the obligation of believing all the truths revealed by
God, even if they arc super-intelligible mysteries, on the motive of the
divine veracity; these are all doctrines and principles in which there is a
substantial agreement. Moreover, the New-Haven school has brought the
Calvinistic doctrines in those respect in which it has modified them, into
a nearer approximation to the Catholic doctrines, than they were before. In
regard to the cardinal point of justification, the difference is really
less than it would appear. Although, in the New-Haven theology, faith is
made to include what Catholics call the theological virtue of hope, yet it
includes also that which we call faith, and which the Council of Trent
defines to be the "root of all justification;" that is, a firm, explicit
belief in those revealed truths which are necessary _ex necessitate
medii_, and a belief at least implicit in all other revealed truths. As
Dr. Bacon says, it is held that faith, in order to justify, must be
accompanied by charity, or the love of God. It is our opinion, therefore,
that the New-Haven divines really hold that it is _fides formata_, or
faith informed and vivified by love which justifies, and that this doctrine
is practically preached by the Congregational clergy generally. This is
identically the Catholic doctrine. In this case and in others, the sayings
of the learned Döllinger is verified, that "Protestants and Catholics have
theologically come nearer to each other."

Perhaps we may now be able to explain to Dr. Bacon our notion of
conversion, in a way which will make it appear not quite so repugnant to
his reason and feelings, as it is at present. In order to do this, we will
resort to an illustration, which will make our meaning plain.

We suppose Dr. Bacon will admit that the Jews before the time of our Lord
did not generally have an explicit belief in the trinity or in the divinity
of the Messiah; and that probably the apostles, when they were first called
did not have this explicit belief; although these doctrines, especially the
latter, are really contained in the Old Testament. Nevertheless, all who
were Israelites indeed were in the state of grace, and the children of God.
Let us suppose now, the case of a pious Jew, after the ascension of our
Lord, who neither believed in Jesus as the true Messiah, nor had culpably
and wilfully rejected his claims when sufficiently proposed to him. We
suppose Dr. Bacon will admit that this good man had already saving faith,
justification, the sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit, was spiritually
united to the universal church of which Christ is the head, and was united
therefore in faith and love with St. Peter, and all the members of the
apostolic communion. St. Peter preaches to him Jesus Christ, and he
believes his word, submits to his authority as the apostle of the Lord, is
baptized, joins himself to the Christian community, and partakes of the
communion. Let us suppose, for the sake of illustration, that this was the
case with Stephen, who became the first martyr.

Let us now take the case of Saul of Tarsus. Without deciding positively
whether Saul was morally culpable or not, for his opposition to
Christianity, we will suppose that he was so. At the time of his going to
Damascus, he was therefore without saving faith, unjustified, destitute of
sanctifying grace, and therefore not spiritually united with the church of
Christ, and with St. Peter and his brethren. By the grace of God Saul
believes in Jesus Christ, is baptized, and openly joins the Christian
communion governed and taught by the apostles.

{108}

Now, in those two cases, we have instances of an interior change of the
intellect and will followed by an exterior change of ecclesiastical
relations, which is properly called a conversion to Christianity. Stephen
and Saul are treated by the apostles and elders of the church in precisely
the same manner, when they apply for baptism. Yet, in the former case, the
interior change is not a conversion of the mind from unbelief to divine
faith, or of the will from sin to the love of God. It is a conversion of
the mind from an inchoate, imperfect apprehension of the revealed object of
faith to a complete and perfect apprehension of the same object more
clearly revealed. It is a conversion of the will from an implicit
determination to submit to the rightful authority of the Messiah, to an
explicit, actual obedience to the Lord Jesus as the Son of God, the
Prophet, Priest and King of the Jews and of the Gentiles.

In the other case, conversion included in itself the renunciation of a
proud, intellectual self-reliance which excluded the spirit of submission
to the authority of God over the mind, and the substitution of the humble,
docile habit of faith; together with a change of the will or heart from a
selfish, cruel devotion to the purely national glory of Judea to a
disinterested and divine love of God and all mankind.

In general terms, however, we speak of conversion from Judaism to
Christianity in reference to all, who have been born and brought up Jews,
and from conviction profess their belief in Jesus Christ, without
discriminating among different persons, in regard to their subjective
state. If we should undertake to give the philosophy of this conversion, we
should probably suppose our subject to represent subjectively what we
consider to be objective Judaism, whose logical basis is a denial of the
Christ foretold in the Old Testament, and personally made known in the new,
as Jesus of Nazareth. We should correctly describe this conversion as a
surrender of the mind and will to the authority of Jesus Christ; and should
correctly say that no person was thoroughly converted into a Christian, who
merely approved of such doctrines, and practiced such precepts of Jesus
Christ as he might choose, or select, by his own personal judgment and
will; but, who did not submit his mind to all the truth which Christ has
taught, on the motive of his divine infallibility, and his will to all he
has commanded, on the motive of his divine authority.

It is plain that Stephen must have acknowledged St. Peter as the accredited
representative of Jesus Christ, through whom he received the doctrine he
was to believe, and the precepts he was to obey, as a Christian. The New
Testament was yet unwritten, and the divine word could only be learned from
the lips or the apostles. Stephen could not, therefore, submit his mind and
will to Jesus Christ, except by submitting to their authority. Now, if this
authority has really been transmitted to the successors of St. Peter, and
to their colleagues in the episcopate, it is plain that it is by submission
to this authority that we are to submit the mind and will to Jesus Christ,
who has delegated it to them. "He that heareth you heareth me;" "As my
Father hath sent me, even so send I you," Therefore, when a person who has
not hitherto formally and explicitly recognized and submitted to this
authority, makes his submission to it, we call it a conversion, because it
betokens a real interior change of the intellect and will; accompanied by
an exterior change of ecclesiastical relations, if he has belonged to any
other visible communion before, or, if not, by the assumption of these
relations for the first time. This is without respect to his former
subjective state of interior relation to Christ and the church. If he had a
divine faith before, conversion does not include the passage from a state
of unbelief to faith. If this faith was previously vivified by charity, it
does not include the passage from a state of sin to the state or grace.
{109}
If, on the contrary, he was before an infidel, or a wilful heretic, and
destitute of charity, conversion includes both these transitions. We do not
limit the application of the word conversion to a mere interior and
exterior submission to the authority of the church. We employ it also to
designate conversion from sin, and continually preach to Catholics who are
living in sin the necessity of being converted to a holy life. We apply the
term also to a change from a tepid condition of the spiritual life to a
habit of more fervent piety. It is used as a general term to denote any
marked religious change for the better, and its specific meaning must be
determined by the connection in which it is employed. Its indiscriminate
use in denoting the act of transition from a Protestant communion to the
Catholic church does not necessarily imply that no discrimination can be
made among those who make this transition. Nor does it follow that all the
language of the writer whom Dr. Bacon criticizes, can be fully verified in
regard to all Catholic converts. Numbers of them have had from childhood a
firm faith in the principal Christian mysteries, and an habitual
determination of the will, at least for many years, to the love of God. In
such instances, what is technically called "conversion," is like what we
have supposed the conversion of Stephen to have been, the evolution of the
principle of faith and obedience into a more perfect and complete
actuation. Stephen had _fides formata_ before he was baptized, and so
have converts of the kind we are describing, _fides formata_, that is
faith which worketh by love, before their external union to the body of the
Catholic church is consummated.

The change which takes place in a convert of this kind, is not a transfer
of mental allegiance from the word of God to the arbitrary, irresponsible
dictation of a hierarchy. It is simply an increased intelligence of the
actual contents of the word of God, and of the nature of the medium through
which the knowledge of that word is transmitted. The object of faith, upon
which the intellectual act of believing terminates, is the revealed truth
considered as revealed, or as credible on the veracity of God. The medium
or instrument is the testimony by which we are authentically informed of
the fact of revelation and of its contents. In the case supposed, the
person has received from the testimony of the Church, which reaches him
through the Christian tradition, the knowledge of the principal facts and
mysteries revealed by Jesus Christ. Having, therefore, a reasonable motive
for believing, and the aid of divine grace, he was able, when he attained
the use of reason, to elicit explicit acts of faith in the Trinity, the
Incarnation, and other doctrines sufficiently proposed to him, to exercise
continually the habit of faith, and to persevere in the same without any
lapse. In this explicit faith, or faith in actual exercise, was contained
an implicit faith in all that God has revealed, but which was not known to
the subject in an explicit manner. When he examined into that testimony
through which the doctrine of Christ had been proposed to him, he found
that his undoubting belief in that testimony contained all implicit
recognition of the infallibility of the witness, and that he must either
draw the logical conclusion, or renounce the premises. He also found that
the article of the creed, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," as
revealed in the Scripture, and explained by the living, concrete sense of
the primitive Christians, contains in itself the idea of infallibility.
Convinced, therefore, that the Catholic Church, together with her testimony
and instruction respecting the person of the incarnate God and Saviour,
testifies and teaches her own infallibility as a witness, teacher, and
judge of controversies, and that this doctrine is contained in the word of
God, he perceives that he must believe on the veracity of God all that the
church proposes to him as contained in the material object of faith, the
_objectum materiale quod_ of theologians.
{110}
When he is further convinced that the bishop who occupies the See of Peter,
together with his colleagues, constitutes the _ecclesia docens_, the
teaching church, and that the infallible church has, therefore, proclaimed
her doctrine in the decrees of the Council of Trent; of course, nothing
remains for him to do but to seek admission into the fold of the Catholic
Church. This act has not, however, changed the essence of his faith. The
_objectum materiale quod_ of faith need not include explicitly the
infallibility of the church, since all theologians maintain that the
knowledge of God, the Trinity, and the Incarnation, is all that is
necessary _ex necessitate medii_, or by an absolute necessity, to
saving faith; and many maintain that it is the knowledge of God as the
supernatural rewarder which is alone to be placed in this category. Nor is
the infallibility of the church included in the _objectum materiale
quo_ of faith, that is in the objective motive or determining cause of
belief, which is the veracity of God. Billuart and De Lugo may be consulted
on this point by any who wish to ascertain the germane sense of Catholic
theology. Archbishop Manning, in a letter to Dr. Pusey, on the Workings of
the Holy Spirit in the Church of England, has brought out this doctrine
with appropriate proofs and citations in a very lucid and admirable manner.
The letter can be found in the Catholic World for June, 1865. The same had
been previously done by Father Walworth, in a sermon entitled Good
Samaritans, published in the Volume of Paulist Sermons for 1864.

The church is the medium through which the object of faith is
intellectually beheld, and the only medium. It is, therefore, impossible
for her to substitute any other material object of faith in lieu of the
true object, and equally impossible that the material object of faith
should be seen at all through any other medium. Whoever, therefore,
believes what the church proposes to his belief, necessarily believes in
the true object of faith, and whoever believes in the true object of faith
necessarily believes in it through the proposition of the church.

The first conclusion we draw from this postulate is, that the notion of
Catholics being subject to an arbitrary authority of the hierarchy or the
pope to impose whatever articles or belief they may choose, is a pure
misapprehension. The church is a witness to the doctrines and facts once
for all revealed at her original foundation. These doctrines and facts are
on record, The testimony of the church in regard to them has been publicly
given, and she cannot retract her testimony without manifestly falsifying
her claim to be an infallible witness. As a judge of controversies, she can
only judge of controversies relating to these very facts and doctrines.
These judgments, once given, are irrevocable. They have been already
pronounced respecting all the great facts and doctrines of Christianity,
and are on record. One who submits to these judgments knows to what he is
submitting. The synopsis of all Catholic doctrine is given to him in the
decrees of the Council of Trent. Since that Council there has been but one
definition of faith made, and that was the definition of a doctrine already
universally believed before it was defined. The notion that a Catholic is
subject to capricious, arbitrary, and unlimited decrees binding his faith
is altogether chimerical. There is no room for further definitions except
in regard to certain theological questions relating to doctrines already
defined, and the practice of the church has proved how slow she is to limit
the liberty of opinion in the schools by a final decision of questions of
this kind. The argument from the tyrannical nature of church authority is
therefore a mere begging of the question in dispute between Catholics and
Protestants. If the church, as Catholics define the church, be not
infallible, her judicial decisions of doctrine are tyrannical. If she is
infallible, they are not, and do not enslave either faith or reason.
{111}
It is no tyranny over faith, to make known with unerring certainty what God
has revealed, or what is a deduction from that which he has revealed. It is
no tyranny over reason to furnish it with certain universal principles and
indisputable data, from which to make its deductions. The only real
question, therefore, respects the infallibility of the church. So far as
the great mysteries of faith which are believed by orthodox Protestants are
concerned, they must admit that the Catholic Church holds and teaches them;
is compelled by her own formal principle to hold them, because she has long
ago put on record her testimony respecting them; and can never change her
doctrine on any of these vital points.

Our second conclusion is, that the notion of Catholic doctrine which
conceives of it as requiring one to believe that there is no true faith or
holiness outside of the visible communion of the See of Peter, is equally
erroneous. All that Archbishop Manning has said of the workings of the Holy
Spirit in the Church of England is equally applicable to the Congregational
Church of Connecticut. We have no just reason for regarding the original
colonists as formal heretics or schismatics, and even less reason for
including the subsequent generations in that category. All who have lived
and died in that faith which worketh by charity we acknowledge as the
children of God and our brethren in Jesus Christ. Those now living who have
this _fides formata_, are spiritually united to the Holy Catholic
Church, the communion of saints. Consequently, if any of these shall
hereafter enter the visible body of the church, not only will they not be
required to deny the validity of their baptismal covenant with God, and to
abjure their former spiritual life, but they will find in the tribunal of
penance that both will be recognized.

We repeat, therefore, once more, that the proper basis on which we may
confer together concerning the faith, is to be found in those doctrines in
which we agree, and not in those in which we differ. We may not make a
positive judgment in regard to the interior and subjective relation of
individuals toward God or the true Church of God. We leave that to him who
is the only judge of hearts and consciences. We are sure of this, however,
that we are bound to cultivate the spirit of Christian charity toward those
who profess allegiances to our common Lord, to the utmost possible extent.
This charity forbids us to make an arrogant and harsh judgment that they
are, _en masse_ and by the simple fact of their outward profession,
aliens from the household of faith, or that any particular individual is
so, unless he makes it plainly manifest in his conduct. We are agreed on
both sides that we are responsible to God for our belief; and bound, as
teachers and theologians, to study conscientiously the truths of the divine
revelation. We have also a common interest in endeavoring to come to an
agreement, so far as this is necessary in order to establish unity of faith
and of ecclesiastical fellowship. Let us suppose for a moment that Dr.
Bacon represents the Congregational clergy of Connecticut, and that we have
the honor to represent the Catholic clergy. We shall agree that it is our
common interest to defend the authenticity and inspiration of all those
books of the Holy Scripture which we revere in common as canonical, and the
historic truth of the Mosaic and Evangelical records, against infidel
rationalism. Also, to solve the difficulties raised by modern science in
relation to the harmony between rational and revealed truth. Also, to
preserve the faith of the people in the Trinity, the Incarnation, and other
doctrines which we hold in common, and which are strongly attacked by many
popular preachers and writers in New-England. Also, to counteract the
tendency to indifferentism and apathy in regard to religion which is so
common.
{112}
Also, to take all possible means to bring the mass of the people under the
influence of the spiritual and moral truths of the Gospel. Also, to protect
the Christian ordinance of marriage from being to a great extent subverted
by the practice of divorce. Also, to suppress intemperance, licentiousness,
and immoralities destructive of the well-being of society. Also, to protect
the religious liberties and rights of all religious societies, and the
property, which is devoted to religious, charitable, and scientific
purposes. Also, to do all in our power to blend the various elements of the
population into one homogeneous body, and to educate them in an enlightened
and devoted attachment to the political principles of the founders of the
state.

We will not go any further with our enumeration, for fear of assuming too
much in respect to the sentiments of our respected friend, Dr. Bacon. We
speak for our individual self alone, in saying that we cannot but deplore
the obstacle which is put in the way of carrying out into practical results
our common desire for the spiritual, moral, and social well-being of the
people of our native and ancestral State, by the schism which exists among
those who profess in common so large a portion of the Christian faith. The
spectacle presented by a divided Christianity is to us extremely painful.
We think it ought to be, also, to a member of the church founded by the
Puritans. The forefathers of New-England undoubtedly intended to plant the
pure church and faith of Christ. They made the greatest sacrifices and the
most heroic exertions in order to do it. They expected their church to
flourish, to remain, and to include in its fold all their posterity. They
took somewhat stringent measures to secure the success of their plan, and
notwithstanding our difference of judgment from them as to the justice or
wisdom of their policy, we must allow that they were conscientious. Things
have turned out, however, quite otherwise than they sanguinely expected.
Not to speak of the more extreme change which has taken place at the
headquarters of Puritanism, Connecticut is divided up among
Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Methodists, and Baptists, to say nothing
of the small sects which exist there. Rival colleges and seminaries have
been established, and even rival schools of theology among the
Congregationalists dispute over their respective interpretations of the
ancient standards of doctrine. Dr. Bacon and his friends have had no little
to suffer during their public career as ministers and professors of
theology, from the imputation of heterodoxy, and they know well how
frequently and how deeply religious differences have interfered with the
peace of families, the union of friends, and the success of religions
efforts. The Catholic Church we say nothing about, for this has been almost
exclusively the church of a late immigration of poor people, who have
sought an asylum from English tyranny among the descendants of those who
long ago fled from that same tyranny, and so nobly broke its yoke from
their necks.

However tolerable and unavoidable such a state of things may appear to
some, we cannot but think that the foresight of it would have made the
stern old Puritans of the ancient times groan in spirit. We confess that we
sympathize with them, and that it occasions mournful thoughts to look on
the failure of such a high-souled undertaking as theirs. We sympathize with
their strong affirmation of strict dogmatic and ecclesiastical principles,
and with the same affirmation as made by those who have adhered to the
doctrine handed down from them. We cannot help looking on division
respecting that which pertains to the true, orthodox faith, and the
essential terms of Christian communion, as a great evil. The complaint made
by the late eminent president of Brown University, Dr. Wayland, of the
extensive and growing scepticism of educated men, and the general decay of
practical faith, must be well known to the educated religious public of New
England.
{113}
It is our opinion, that the separation and disagreement among the professed
teachers of Christianity is one great cause of this, and that it breaks the
moral force of the evidence of Christianity in the minds of a large portion
of the most intelligent class, and in the popular mind also. It
disintegrates and neutralizes that power which a united body would have,
and which would give it an irresistible moral force against infidelity,
irreligion, and public immorality. We cannot help longing for the time,
when all those who are now disunited shall be brought together in one fold,
professing one faith, exhibiting the divine truth of the religion of Jesus
Christ by their charity and peace, training up their children from infancy
in the practice of religion, worshipping at the same altar, participating
in life and at the hour of death in the same holy rites, and fully
realizing what a Christian people ought to be.

The Puritan fathers of New-England had a foreshadowing of this state of
things, a foreshadowing, as we hope, of a reality to come. In our opinion,
"they builded better than they knew." We believe they were led here by the
providence of God, and guided by a higher power than their own. So far as
their work was merely human and defective, it was temporary and must pass
away. So far as it was divine, it was lasting and must stand forever. They
have founded noble institutions of learning and general education. They
have transmitted a Christian tradition, which has entered into the very
roots and fibres of intellectual and social life so strongly as to be
ineradicable. However the plant may languish, the root is still vital. Even
those who have wandered far beyond the region of Unitarianism into
speculations so vague and misty that they are almost atheistic, show in
their language, habits of thought, and entire mental structure, that they
have come from a Christian stock. The question of questions is always, what
is the religion of Jesus Christ and the meaning of his life and death upon
the earth? We hope, therefore, that the work commenced by these sternly
earnest men may be completed. In our view of the matter, it was necessary
for divine Providence to interfere, after a long lapse of time, to carry
out its own far-seeing purposes, into which this first and human plan was
to be made to blend and lose itself. The first refugees from the spiritual
tyranny of the British crown sought only an asylum for themselves and their
progeny, where they might realize their own peculiar ideal of a Christian
state and church, in a condition of colonial dependence on the mother
country. As in the political order, the results of the colonization of
America have taken an unforeseen form and magnitude, so in the spiritual.
Roger Williams led out a new band of _Puritanissimi_ from among the
Puritans, which made one division among them. The Church of England
stretched her roots also over to the virgin soil of New-England, and her
vigorous offshoot, Methodism, followed. Rationalism, too, has run its
course, as we all know, from the starting point of Channing, to the most
advanced position of Emerson. Finally, another race, distinct from the
English race by a difference of origin running back to the deluge, whose
origin as a people dates from the period of the grandfather of Moses, and
as a Christian people from the period of the Fathers of the Church, has
transplanted that form of Christianity which it has kept unaltered for
fourteen centuries, to the same soil, where it grows and flourishes "like a
green bay-tree." It is our opinion, that the Providence of God will bring
something out of this far grander and more perfect than the ideal church of
our ancestors. We think that the blending of races will produce a more
perfect type of manhood and a stronger people. We think, also, that the
religion of this people will contain all the positive qualities of the
different elements that will combine to form it.
{114}
Catholic dogma and discipline, which contains in itself all that is
positive in every form of religion, will assimilate whatever is good in all
it finds around it, integrating the noble fragments which have been rent
from the great edifice of Christianity into a perfect unity with
architectonic skill. The collision, intershock, abrasion, and melting
together of these various intellectual and spiritual forces will result in
the harmonizing of all into a unity in which the opposite tendencies
counterbalance each other. Depth and simplicity of interior life with a
rich and varied ritualism, moral strictness and self-abnegation with a
noble magnificence, taste and sobriety with fervor of devotion, unwavering
orthodoxy with a genuine rationalism, stability of forms with a genial
variety, hierarchical order with a manly liberty of personal action, form
the grand features of the type of Christianity destined to be realized in
the future. This is merely _our_ opinion, and we do not expect that it
will be generally received by those who will read these words at the
present time. We are confident, however, that their truth and force will be
recognized hereafter, long after we are numbered with the dead. We have no
expectation that the schism among those who profess the Christian name will
be healed in a summary manner, or as the simple result of discussion and
conference. It must be the work of the Creative Spirit, and cannot be
accomplished without an extraordinary communication of grace. It requires
time, also, and a gradual process. We have no intention of making an
arrogant claim of immediate submission to the authority of the Catholic
Church upon those who are not reasonably and calmly convinced of its
legitimate foundation. We are simply desirous of making a beginning in the
explanation of our own belief, in order to promote a better mutual
understanding of the question at issue between us. We ask simply, what we
are willing to concede to fair and honorable opponents, a hearing and a
candid consideration. The only weight we profess to give to the conversions
out of which this discussion has arisen is a moral weight entitling the
reasons and causes which have produced them to a serious examination. Dr.
Bacon has placed in the opposite scale the notorious fact of the great
losses the Catholic Church has sustained by the defection of her own
members. We beg leave to suggest, however, that there is no parity between
the two facts he endeavors to balance against each other. Those who lapse
into infidelity have first extinguished their conscience. They are not
seeking to draw near to God and to serve Jesus Christ, but to escape from
the dominion of both. Those who have become Protestants have not been
instructed and pious Catholics who were seeking for more light and grace,
but the offspring of parents through whose negligence or misfortune they
had been left to grow up without instruction or practical religion. On the
contrary, a large number of intelligent, well-instructed Protestants, some
of whom were clergymen of the highest standing, like Dr. Newman, Dr.
Manning, and Dr. Ives, have been led by the very effort they have made to
come up to the highest standard of faith and piety presented by their
church, after long and careful deliberation, to the threshold of the
Catholic Church, and have crossed that threshold. Dr. Bacon denies that
this fact has any particular moment for those who are not in the _viâ
mediâ_ of the Anglican Church, but are standing on what he deems the
surer foundation of the Reformed religion as established by Luther and
Calvin. Let his exception have its full value. Nevertheless, the same thing
has occurred on a lesser scale in the Lutheran and other churches of
Switzerland and Germany. Haller, Schlegel, Hurter, and Phillips are names
probably not unknown to the learned Protestants of our country.
{115}
In our own country, among the German Reformed Presbyterians, Dr. Nevin and
others have advanced to a position whose logical direction is straight into
the Catholic Church. The efforts of the illustrious Leibnitz in a former
century, and of Guizot at the present moment, to span the chasm between
Protestant orthodoxy and Catholicism are well known. The beginning of a
reactionary movement of the orthodox Protestants toward Rome is indicated
in the most terse and decisive manner by the great historian Leo, whose
authority is indisputable. Leo is the friend of Hengatenberg the
illustrious vindicator of the Bible against neology; a professor in the
Protestant University of Halle; and the author of a Text Book of Universal
History, which is both a scientific masterpiece and also one of the most
splendid arguments for divine revelation and the truth of Christianity
which this century has produced. These are his words taken from the work
just mentioned:

  "We shall be obliged to seek for the authorization of Protestantism and
  its mission in something widely different from church development, and
  forced to concede that Protestantism in the main forms only an
  exceptional case in the shape of a place of shelter from ecclesiastical
  difficulties, and that the Roman Church, when once released from the
  duties of her mission in other quarters, will also turn her attention,
  not to the abolition of papal authority, but to its more distinct
  definition, and secure it from arbitrary acts of administration, such,
  for example, as occur in the statement of the Thomist theses regarding
  the connection between indulgences and the doctrines of the church, and
  in one of the decrees against the Jansenists, and then will the
  possibility of the Protestant world returning to the church be realized."
  [Footnote 30]

  [Footnote 30: Univ. Geschichte, vol. iii., p.181.]

We have nothing to say on the particular point the learned historian raises
about doctrinal decisions of the Holy See, but have quoted his words just
as they stand in order to show the similarity of his position to that of
Dr. Pusey, and to prove that thoughtful minds in Germany as well as in
England are beginning to desire a reconciliation of the separate communions
with the great body of Christendom. The Catholic tendency is, therefore,
not one which has sprung solely out of the hierarchical and sacramental
doctrines preserved by a kind of semi-Catholic tradition in the high church
school of the Anglicans. It has a deeper seat and a wider extension. It is
not possible to nullify its importance by qualifying converts to the
Catholic Church as men who have made an "abnegation of reason, of the
faculty which discerns right and wrong, and even of choice and personal
responsibility to God," stifled their faculties of thinking for themselves
and of discerning between truth and falsehood. This theory will not hold
water, as the judgment of the English press on the controversy between Mr.
Kingsley and Dr. Newman amply proves. The prejudice against Catholics is
wearing away. Many, even devout Protestants, have no longer any objection
to join in the prayers or listen to the sermons or read the books of
Catholic priests. Catholics and Protestants are becoming connected by ties
of blood or marriage, they mingle in the social circle, and they have
fought side by side on the bloody battle-field. The impressions made on the
imagination of childhood must necessarily be effaced by contact with the
reality. The Catholic religion will become known for what it is, and its
advocates will receive the respectful hearing to which they are entitled.

We have all along intimated that it is not so much the mere exterior
argument for the authority of the church, as the dogmatic theology and the
interior spiritual doctrine preserved and transmitted by her authoritative
teaching, to which we desire to see the attention of our evangelical
brethren directed. The soul of the church is the noblest of its parts, and
the vivifying principle of the body. The really cardinal question at issue
concerns the method by which the individual soul is united with this soul
of the church, nourished and perfected in divine knowledge and love. In
this is included the nature of that manifestation of itself which the soul
of the church makes in its visible body.
{116}
We have no time to go into this subject at present. Courtesy to both the
writers whose articles we are reviewing requires, however, that we should
notice some of the topics over which their polemical weapons have clashed
so vigorously.

The writer of the article in this magazine denies that Protestants hold the
doctrine of the visibility of the church, while the writer in the "New
Englander" indignantly affirms that they do hold it. Both are in the right,
because each has an entirely different idea of the visible church from the
other. The Catholic idea will be found very ably exhibited in an essay on
the Two Sides of Catholicism, translated from the German, and published in
some of the earliest numbers of this magazine. Want of time and the
necessity of keeping our article within proper limits oblige us to leave
the matter without further remark, simply observing that no Catholic
theologian would ever think of denying that orthodox Protestants hold to a
visible, universal church, in the sense explained by Dr. Bacon.

In regard to justification, the first writer asserts that, according to the
Protestant doctrine, every man who believes he is saved by Christ is by
that sole belief united to the invisible church, which his opponent also
vehemently denies. It is the original, genuine Lutheran doctrine, _Sola
fides formaliter justificat_, Faith alone formally justifies, which is
in question. We do not think Dr. Bacon either understands or believes this
doctrine. The New England theology has from the beginning had a character
of its own, in which the subjective change called regeneration, a change of
heart, or conversion, consisting in an inward, supernatural transformation
of the soul through the grace of the Holy Spirit, has been made very
prominent. The Catholic formula, _Fides, una cum aliis requisitis,
dispositive justificat_, Faith, together with other requisites,
dispositively justifies, expresses better the spirit of this theology than
the Lutheran formula. That the merits of Christ are the meritorious cause
of justification is agreed upon by all parties. The exact sense of the
Lutheran formula is difficult of apprehension and of expression in clear
terms. As we understand it, it imports that the justification of the
sinner, which is, in this system, a mere forensic justification, and is
from eternity objectively perfect, is subjectively applied by an act of the
mind firmly believing on Christ as the substitute and ransom of the
particular subject making this act. In the strict Calvinistic system, the
doctrine that Christ redeemed only the elect is distinctly made the basis
of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Saving faith, therefore,
implies that the subject believes that Christ died for him in particular,
and that consequently he is entitled to the favor of God and eternal life,
irrespective of his personal acts, although he cannot receive this favor or
be prepared for the happiness of heaven without the gift of a grace which
gradually sanctifies him. Fletcher of Madely, the great theologian of the
Methodists, wrote most ably against this Solifidian system. It has also
been strongly combated within the past few months by Dr. Young, of
Edinburgh. It is our opinion that this doctrine tends to reduce religion to
pure individualism, and thus to obliterate both dogma and church. It
concentrates the method of salvation into a mental or spiritual act by
which Christ is apprehended in the relation of Saviour. This act is
supposed to be excited by a supernatural inspiration of the Holy Spirit;
but, as there is no test by which the reality of the inspiration can be
certainly verified, it reduces personal religion to a subjective sentiment.
A subjective personal trust in and affection to Jesus Christ becomes,
therefore, the principal mark of a Christian and of a member of the true
church. All who have this ought, therefore, to fraternize and commune
together. The principle of private judgment on matters of doctrine is
closely connected with this principle of individualism in the relation of
the soul to Christ.
{117}
Intellectual and spiritual individualism is the metaphysical note of
Protestantism. Spiritual illumination not being anything which can be
verified, except by miracles, the principle of individualism has a tendency
to eliminate it, and to substitute pure rationalism. Hence, the great
Protestant writer Leo says, in the immediate context of the passage above
cited from his history, that "entire Protestantism has continually
complained of its inability ever to arrive at any union as regards the
question whether the Scripture is to be interpreted by reason alone or
through interior illumination." When we talk about Protestantism, we
include the whole nominal Protestant world, and do not restrict our remarks
to the comparatively small number of faithful adherents to the old orthodox
confessions. We speak of the logical principles which distinguish
Protestantism from Catholicity, as they are in their abstract essence, and
as they work out their effects of negation and individualization. As to the
actual, concrete condition of Protestant bodies, it is very easy to use
loose expressions, and to make hasty generalizations, which can easily be
criticised. The writer attacked by Dr. Bacon may have fallen into some
inaccuracies of this kind. They afford no ground, however, for the charge
of either ignorance or wilful misrepresentation. We do not care to analyze
either his statements or the counter statements of his opponent. The
manifest fact that a considerable body of Protestants do hold to the
dogmatic formularies of their churches, and to strict practical rules of
moral and religious duty, is one which we not only acknowledge, but take a
great pleasure in knowing to exist. We are glad to estimate the Christian
faith and piety which exist among them at its highest probable maximum.

Another point to be noticed is the estimation in which the Holy Scriptures
are held among Catholics. This is a point of great importance in our
estimation, and one in which it gives us great pain that the true Catholic
sentiment should be misunderstood. Controversialists may sometimes
exaggerate the difficulty of understanding the meaning of the Scriptures,
when they are intent on proving the necessity of Catholic tradition and a
teaching authority, or use expressions which would at first view appear to
a devout Protestant like Richard Baxter or Dr. Bacon, lacking in due
reverence for the written word of God. It is only, however, a want of
acquaintance with the real doctrine and spirit of the Catholic Church which
causes a person to be scandalized by such things. It is in the works of the
fathers, of the doctors, of the great theologians, of the saints, that we
find the just and adequate expression of the mind of the church. It is
impossible to exaggerate the sentiment of reverence for the Holy Scriptures
with which these great writers are filled. It is the perennial source, pure
and undefiled, from which their inspiration is drawn. The Bible is the work
of God, as the firmament of heaven is his work. It has the precedence of
dignity over tradition, decrees of councils, theology, science, literature,
every other work in which man concurs with the spirit of God; because in
the production of the Bible the Spirit of God has concurred with the spirit
of man in a higher and more immediate manner. There is but one question to
be asked: How shall we ascertain the true sense of the Scripture? For, as
soon as it is ascertained, it demands the homage of the mind _per se_
as the revelation of infinite truth.

We concur in what Dr. Bacon has written on this point, so far as its
general scope is concerned. He establishes all we desire to maintain,
namely, that the truths of revelation are not given in the form of
systematized dogmatic teachings in the Scripture. Therefore it is that we
need to be imbued with the sense of the Scripture by traditional teaching,
and to be furnished with a dogmatic formula in which its doctrines are
clearly defined, in order to be able easily and certainly to perceive in
their sublimity and completeness the divine truths contained in it.
{118}
Hence, the Jews, for want of this, cannot see Christ in the Old Testament.
Unitarians cannot see the Trinity or Incarnation in the New Testament.
Catholics, Anglicans, Congregationalists, Calvinists, Armenians,
Rationalists, Friends, Campbellites, and many others, cannot agree as to
the combination principle which will unlock the whole meaning of the
Scripture. We do not attribute this to the Scriptures themselves, but to
the incapability of the individual mind or spirit to take the place of the
divinely appointed, infallible witness, teacher, and judge of
controversies, to whose keeping the sacred Scriptures have been committed.
When faith is fixed as regards the great universal dogmas, and the canon
authoritatively settled, a perfect universe is opened to the student of the
Holy Scriptures, where he may prosecute his studies uncontrolled by
anything except reason, conscience, and a just humility. We have no
question whatever that all the articles of the Catholic Faith can be
conclusively proved by Scripture. None whatever that the principles on
which sound criticism and exegesis are conducted are truly scientific. We
believe that the books of Scripture are intelligible, and a perfect mine of
intellectual, spiritual, and moral treasure. This is true, eminently, of
the sacred books as they are studied in their original languages. It is no
less true, however, that its most important treasures of knowledge are
equally open to those who can read the best versions. No book has ever been
so many times well translated as the Bible. Let a version be warranted by a
competent authority, and one may expatiate in it with as much freedom and
confidence that his mind is really borne up on the ocean of divine truth,
as if he could read the Hebrew and Greek with the readiness of a Mai or a
Hengstenberg. It is, therefore, without doubt, a most excellent and
profitable exercise for good, plain people, able to read and understand the
English Bible, to read it continually and attentively. In proportion as one
become capable of understanding the Holy Scriptures, and has the means of
prosecuting his studies, in the same proportion will the advantage to be
gained increase. We have no fear of any intelligent, instructed Catholic
being injured by reading the Bible. Nor do we consider the very general and
high esteem of King James's version among English-speaking Protestants, and
their general familiarity with it, as an evil, or as an obstacle to the
spread of Catholic doctrines. We regard that version as among the best in
literary excellence, and as substantially accurate. We would as soon argue
from it with a Protestant as from the original texts. Indeed, we think it a
special blessing of God that one version, and that one so generally
faithful to the true sense of the Scripture, should be almost universally
diffused through the English-speaking world. Would that all who have
inherited the Christian name were firmly persuaded of the divine
inspiration of the Scriptures and sincerely desirous to learn their true
meaning! With all those who acknowledge Jesus Christ to be an infallible
Teacher sent from God, we feel that we have one firm spot to stand upon.
Where not only this truth is held, but, also, that he is the true and
eternal Son of God, and that the New Testament of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ is so inspired by his Spirit that every statement it contains
respecting doctrine, morals, and the facts connected with them is
infallibly true, we have another firm spot broader than the first. As for
those who have altogether lost their footing upon even the first of these
solid Christian principles, we may well shudder at the magnitude and
difficulty of the work of their re-conversion to Christianity. Yet, this is
the great work really impending, unless we would see a large portion of
Christendom swept away into infidelity, and involved in all its appalling
consequences.
{119}
For this reason we desire with all our heart that the differences among
those who believe that all the hopes of the human race are contained in the
Christian revelation should be finally settled, and that all should agree
as to what that Christianity is, which shall be proposed to the acceptance
of all mankind. This desire has been our motive for endeavoring to pierce
through the special and personal issues of the controversy before us, and
to bring it upon broader and more open ground. We have endeavored to get
the question out of a region where we conceive that misunderstanding and
useless contention will be interminable. There is an antecedent difficulty
in the way which we know very well, and did know before we were so
distinctly reminded of it by our learned friends of New-Haven. It is the
preconceived opinion they hold respecting the end and object which the
advocates of the Catholic religion have in view, and the policy according
to which they act. We have not been sanguine enough to suppose that
anything we can say will remove this difficulty. Until our respected
friends become familiar with the works of our great theologians and
spiritual writers, and come into closer intellectual contact with the
general Catholic mind and heart, there must be a non-conducting medium
between us, which will obstruct the communication of thought and sentiment.
We aim only to recommend this study, on grounds of reason, policy, and
Christian charity. We have already seen its effects in many instances in
bringing nearer together those who are widely sundered, and therefore we
will cherish the hope that its ultimate result may be a complete and
universal reconciliation.

-----

    Abridged from the Dublin University Magazine.

    Athlone And Aughrim.


    Preparations for the Struggle.


During the winter and spring of 1691, General Ginckel had the comfort or
seeing the forces under his command tolerably well clothed and fed, and
housed in different cities and towns, while their antagonists in Connaught
enjoyed these advantages but sparingly. Tyrconnell returned from France in
January, leaving 10,000 louis d'or at Brest to purchase provisions, etc.,
and bringing to Limerick about 18,000. He established public confidence to
some extent by reducing copper crowns and half-crowns to their just value.
He gratified the Irish party by producing a royal patent, creating
Sarsfield Earl of Lucan, Viscount of Tully, and Baron of Rosberry.

In May of the same year arrived in the Shannon the French fleet, laden with
provisions, arms, ammunition, and clothing, but neither men nor money.
However, what they did bring must have been a great boon to the poor
soldiers, whose pay, when money was available, had hitherto not exceeded a
penny a day. With these supplies came General St. Ruth to assume the
command of James's forces in Ireland, which at and from that time included
no French soldiers. The main strength of William's, armies was concentrated
about Mulingar, and the Dutch commander was ably seconded by his officers--
Talmash, Mackay, and De Ruvigny, names familiar to the readers of Richard
Ashton's play of the "Battle of Aughrim." St. Ruth had for assistants
Majors-General d'Usson and De Tesse, and Lieutenant-General Patrick
Sarsfield, but unhappily for the cause he came to maintain he assumed airs
of reserve and superiority with the Irish nobleman, which the latter could
ill brook.

{120}

On June the 6th of that eventful year the campaign may be said to have
begun with the march from Mullingar. We learn from "Tristram Shandy" that
the army in Flanders swore frightfully, and indeed it was not much better
in Westmeath. We find Baron de Ginckel giving strict orders, while the army
was proceeding westward, that the chaplain should read prayers at the head
of each regiment at ten in the morning, and again at seven in the evening,
and exhort their flocks to desist from swearing, "a vice (as Rev. Mr. Story
complains) too common among us." "Stealing" seems to have been another
prevalent weakness; the chaplain relates how "a fellow stole a horse and
was hanged for it, which wrought some reformation for a time." The
following order implies considerable demoralization among the varied
populace in arms ruled by the able Dutch general: "No sutler or other
person whatever should buy any ammunition, arms, or accoutrements, or any
thing that belonged to the soldiers on pain of death; because the soldiers
for a little money would be apt to sell their cloaths or shoes; and if as
great care were not taken of most of them as of children, they would soon
be in a very indifferent condition."

The only incident that varied their march to Athlone was the taking of the
strong fort of Ballymore. Mr. Story censures the commander, Myles Burke,
for "not listening to the general's mild proposals." After vigorous
salutations of powder and shot on both sides, Ginckel sent a verbal demand
to surrender within two hours or else--! Governor Burke requested the
message to be conveyed to him in writing, but gained nothing by the motion.
The following missive was immediately sent in writing:

  "Since the governour desires to see in writing the message which I just
  now sent him by word of mouth, he may know that if he surrenders the fort
  of Ballymore to me within two hours, I will give him and his garrison
  their lives and make them prisoners of war. If not, neither he nor they
  shall have any quarter, nor another opportunity of saving themselves.
  However, if in that time their women and children will go out they have
  my leave.
    "Given in the camp, this
    8th day of June, 1691,
    at eight a clock in the
    morning.
      Bar. De Ginckell."

The general was not so severe in deed as in word, for though resistance
continued to be made with two Turkish cannon mounted on cart-wheels, much
beyond the stipulated two hours, he still treated the defenders as
prisoners of war.


  The Siege of Athlone.

On the 19th of June the English cannon began to thunder on the devoted
outworks of the English town of Athlone, to wit, that portion of it which
stands on the eastern side of the Shannon. Story gives the number of the
English army at this time as eighteen thousand, well provided with all
warlike appurtenances. A breach was made in the indifferent defence, and
next day the assault was made by four thousand men. The defenders after
losing two hundred men made their way into the Irish town on the western
bank, taking care to leave behind them toward their own side two wide
chasms, below which flowed the Shannon deep and rapid. This was the amount
of the destructive work done on the second day. St. Ruth, hearing of the
taking of the English town that evening, advanced within three miles of the
still untaken portion, having about fifteen thousand men, horse and foot,
under his command.

{121}

The next things done were the erection of batteries on the eastern side of
the river, and the subsequent demolition of the eastern wall of the castle,
and other fortifications on the Irish side, by the incessant storm of
cannon-balls from the strong defence on the eastern bank. A horrible
incident of this siege was connected with a mill resting on the bridge,
which, being fired by the English grenades, its sixty-four defenders were
burnt alive. Two only escaped by springing into the river.

As fast as castle walls and other fortifications were demolished, new posts
of defence and annoyance were set up on the Irish side, and the breaches in
the bridge could not be floored over, owing to the unwelcome neighborhood
of the Irish guns. The English general, weighing the difficulty of an
effectual transit, bethought of sending a lieutenant with an exploring
party to examine a reported ford toward Lanesborough:

  "Where there might be an easy and undiscovered passage for most of our
  army, while our cannon amused the enemy at the town. This party went and
  found the pass according to information, but tho' he (the lieutenant) was
  positively ordered to return as soon as he had passed the river, yet such
  are the powerful charms of black cattle to some sorts of people, that the
  lieutenant, espying a prey some distance from him on the other side, must
  needs be scampering after them, by which means our design was discovered,
  and the enemy immediately provided against it by throwing up strong works
  on the other side. The lieutenant, I heard, was afterward try'd, and
  suffer'd for it."

Good-hearted as we imagine our chaplain to have been, he could never bring
himself up to the point of impartial laudation of the good qualities of his
opponents. The ford toward Lanesborough being out of the question, the most
vigorous efforts were made to get possession of the bridge; but the stern
determination of the Irish party foiled every attempt.

At last the Irish breastwork, which prevented the English engineers from
laying a flooring over the now solitary chasm, was destroyed. It consisted
in great part of fascines (fagots), which being in an unlucky moment set on
fire by English grenades, were quickly consumed, owing to the dryness and
heat of the weather. The opportunity was not lost, planks were thrown
across, and even a flooring laid on in part, when a heroic band of ten men
of Maxwell's regiment, commanded by a sergeant, and all in armor, advanced
from the western end of the bridge, and began to tear up planks and boards,
and fling them into the river. A storm of bullets soon levelled them
despite their harness before they had completed the daring deed; but their
places were taken by another devoted eleven. They succeeded in
precipitating the remaining beams into the river at the sacrifice of the
lives of nine of their number. Two escaped, and the bridge was once more
impassable.

The name and fame of the historic or mythic Horatius Coeles has been
preserved for upward of two thousand years. There is not a verse extant to
the praise of these score of heroic men, martyrs to their cause. Their very
names are lost, if we except the sergeant, and probably _Custume_, the
name by which his memory is preserved, is either a mistake or a nickname.

The next attempt to pass the river was well arranged beforehand. It was
decided that at an early hour in the day efforts should be made at three
different points--the bridge, a ford lately discovered below the bridge,
and a point still lower to be crossed on pontoons. However, the boats
required more time to reach their places than was calculated on, and a
covered gallery, intended to facilitate the passage at the bridge, was
destroyed at the commencement of the advance. The Irish and English
grenadiers on the bridge began to fling their peculiar weapons at each
other, and luck being with the Irish on this occasion, their grenades set
fire to the enemy's fascines and to the covered gallery. There being a
strong westerly wind at the time, the flames spread rapidly, and caused
much confusion.
{122}
St. Ruth had received previous intimation of the design, and the flower of
the Irish troops were ready to receive the unwelcome visitors. Detachments
had poured into the garrison, and the main army remained under the cover of
the western ramparts of the Irish town, to rush in on the storming body if
they succeeded in crossing the river. The event of the strife on the bridge
prevented the attempt by the ford or the pontoons.

This check had a very disheartening effect upon the besieging forces; for,
though their cannon ceaselessly continued to play on the defences of the
Irish town, a council of war was held, wherein the difficulties of staying
there any longer were represented.

The council came to a wise resolution under the circumstances. It was
dangerous to retire, it was dangerous to advance; but glory and honor might
wait on the latter alterative, and it was adopted. The report of two
deserters who succeeded in coming across encouraged them in their
courageous resolve. They represented St. Ruth and his officers as put off
their guard, and expected to hear of the retreat of the English at any
moment. They also reported the garrison at that moment as consisting of
three of the rawest regiments in the whole force.

The report was in the main correct. St. Ruth had given a large party to the
ladies and gentlemen of the country, and universal joy and negligence ruled
in the army. The general, wishing to season the latest recruits, sent them
to keep garrison, directing that the fortifications in the rear, chiefly
consisting of earth works, should be levelled, so as to afford facility for
the new hands to retire, if they found themselves crowded by the foe, and
also facility to the tried men in the camp to come to their relief under
the same undesirable circumstances. D'Usson represented the want of wisdom
in the appointment of the raw hands to the post of danger, and further
objected to the destruction of the ramparts. The Irish chiefs did not
cordially co-operate; and there was a palpable want of wisdom in their
councils. The earthworks remained untouched, and the inexperienced soldiers
were set to learn their first dangerous lesson, a fierce foe in front, no
means of safe retreat in the rear, and a prodigious stake depending on
their firmness. [Footnote 31]


    [Footnote 31: It is mentioned in some accounts that when these new men
    found themselves at their posts they were unprovided with powder.
    Having after some delay got this article, they had to apply again for
    bullets. Captain Maxwell, to whom the application came, thinking they
    were already provided, jestingly asked, "Was it to shoot larks?"]

The ford already mentioned had been tried in the first instance by three
Dutchmen in armor, the English guns firing volleys apparently at them, but
in reality over their heads during the transit. This device protected them
from the Irish bullets, as they were supposed to be deserters. However,
when they turned round after a reasonably near approach to the Irish side,
they began to find the leaden shower pelting about their ears from that
quarter. They made their escape with some slight wounds, the water at the
deepest having only reached their waists. The season was a remarkably dry
one, and that ford had never been so shallow in the memory of man.

De Ginckel and his chiefs, having come to the resolution of trying another
bold assault, did not defer its execution till the enemy should become
apprised of their intention. The hour of relieving guard at six o'clock was
chosen, when the Irishtown men saw nothing very unusual in the crowding of
the English soldiers into the garrison. Everything being minutely arranged
between the Dutch general and his officers, a body of determined men moved
toward the ford. This was the critical movement on the success of which
depended the action to be taken at the other two passages. And here a
quotation from the memoir of Patrick Sarsfield, by J. W. Cole, Esq., will
help to make the state of things at that hour more clear:

{123}

  "Sarsfield apprised St. Ruth of the enemy's intention. He turned a deaf
  ear to the messenger who found him dressing for a shooting excursion,
  laughed at the idea of bringing up the army to repel an imaginary attack,
  and said scoffingly that his officers were tired with dancing at last
  night's ball. Sarsfield repeated the intelligence, representing in the
  most urgent terms that not a moment was to be lost. 'They dare not do
  it,' said the confident Frenchman, 'and I so near,' adding that he would
  give a thousand louis to hear that the English durst attempt to pass.
  'Spare your money and mind your business,' was the gruff retort of
  Sarsfield. 'I know the English better than you do. There is no enterprise
  too desperate for their courage to attempt.'"

Col. Charles O'Kelly gives it as his opinion that the Scotch Colonel
Maxwell "sold the pass." Here is a translation of his Latin:

  "One of his legions having swam over the Lycus that afternoon, no sooner
  came to Ororis (Ginekel) and delivered him a private message than the
  party was immediately detached to attack the river. When the soldiers
  called out to Maxilles for arrows (bullets), he would give them none, but
  asked them whether they should shoot against the birds of the air. He
  ordered the men to lie down and take their rest, saying there would be no
  action till night. So that when the enemy entered, the soldiers for the
  most part were asleep, and few or none in their posts. When the first man
  of the enemy mounted the breach, be boldly asked him, 'Do you know me?'
  whereupon he got quarter, and all the rest were put to the sword; this it
  seems being the signal to distinguish the betrayer from the rest, and it
  is supposed that Ororis commanded those who were upon the attack, to use
  the officer well who should put that question. ... Lysander (Sarsfield)
  accused him a few days before in the general's presence, and it is
  certain it was not prudently done, after giving you such a public
  affront, to intrust to him the command of a post of that importance, but
  it seems Corydon (Tyrconnel) would have it so, and Pyrrhus (St. Ruth) did
  not think fit to disoblige the viceroy."

We are not convinced of Maxwell's treachery, Col. O'Kelly's surmises
notwithstanding. He intensely disliked Tyrconnel, and this dislike was
shared in by all who enjoyed his favor. The public accusation, and the
important post intrusted soon after to the accused are the reverse of cause
and effect. We shall presently set his behavior at the assault in a better
light.


  The Passage of the Shannon.

A few minutes after the tolling of the church bell at 6 o'clock P.M., the
English batteries commenced playing furiously on the town, seconded by
numerous volleys from marksman who were stationed on ladders placed against
the inside of the wall in English town. In directing this deafening uproar
Ginckel seems to have badly co-operated with Colonel Maxwell in putting the
poor raw recruits to sleep. Simultaneously with this flourish, the trial of
the ford was made, to describe which we prefer the words of the
eye-witness, Story, to those of any other, including our own.

  "About 2,000 detach't men were now ready, and Major-General Mackay to
  command them. Major-General Tettcau, the Prince of Hesse, and Brigadeer
  La Molliner were likewise of the party, and Major-General Talmarsh went a
  volunteer with a party of grannadeers, commanded by Collonel Gustavus
  Hambleton. And for the greater encouragement to the soldiers, the general
  distributed a sum of guinea's amongst them, knowing the powerful
  influence of gold, though our armies had as little occasion for such
  gratuities (I mean as to that point of whetting their courage) as any in
  all the world, and have done as much without them.

  "The ford was over against a bastion of the enemies where a breach was
  made already, and the river being try'd three days before, ... and found
  passable; so that all things being in this order, six minutes past six a
  clock, Captain Sandys and two lieutenants led the first party of 60
  granadeers, all in armour and 20 a breast, seconded by another good body,
  who all with an amazing resolution took the river, the stream being very
  rapid and deep (?) at which time our great and small shot began to play
  from our batteries and works on our side upon the enemies works on the
  other, and they fired as thick as possible upon our men that were passing
  the river, who forced their way thro fire and smoak, and gaining the
  other bank the rest laid planks over the broken part of the bridge, and
  others were laying the bridge of boats, by which our men passed over so
  fast that in less than half an hour we were masters of the town. ... A
  great many of the Irish were killed in their works, and yet its
  observable that our men when they saw themselves really masters of the
  town, were not at all forward to kill those at their mercy, though it was
  in a manner in the heat of action. But the rubbish and stuff thrown down
  by our cannon was more difficult to climb over than a great part of the
  enemies works which occasioned our soldiers to swear and curse even among
  the bullets themselves, upon which Major-General Mackay told them that
  they had more reason to fall upon their knees and thank God for their
  victory, and that they were brave men and the best of men if they would
  swear less. ...
{124}
  Among the (Irish officers) were slain during the siege and attack, Col.
  O'Gara, [Footnote 32] Col. Richard Grace, Col. Art. Oge Mackmahon, two of
  the Mack Genness, and several others."

    [Footnote 32: This is probably a mistake, as there is record but of one
    Col. O'Gara in King James's forces, and he is afterward heard of at
    Limerick. Col. Richard Grace had fought vigorously for Charles I. till
    the surrender at Oxford in 1646. Returning to Ireland he raised at his
    own expense a force estimated at from three to five thousand men, and
    enjoyed the honor of having his head valued at £500 by Cromwell. In
    1652 he was permitted to retire to the continent with a contingent of
    1200 men. The Duke of York always treated him with the greatest
    friendship. After the restoration his estates in the King's County and
    were restored to him. He had defendant Athlone during Cromwell's wars,
    and again in 1690 against Douglas. During his government of this
    garrison he was rigid in repressing any outrages on the country people
    by the military, and on one occasion he had 10 soldiers hung at the
    same time from the outer wall for such offenses. He was killed the day
    preceding the capture, and his body discovered when the English got
    possession. His activity and energy could not be surpassed. In bringing
    up forces from a part of Kilkenny to Athlone he walked with the men
    seventy miles in two days. Another time he rode from Dublin to Athlone
    and back, 116 Irish miles in twenty-four hours.]

Notwithstanding the treachery imputed to Col. Maxwell, he exerted himself
gallantly to cover the retreat of the poor recruits, who found the rear
fortifications sadly in their way. St. Ruth, on receiving the fatal news,
sent off Major-General John Hamilton with two brigades of infantry to drive
out the enemy. But as the western ramparts had been considerately left for
the protection and comfort of this same enemy, the scrambling over these
works, and the subsequent driving out of the numerous and flushed forces
behind them, was not to be accomplished by a mere _coup de main_, and
two infantry brigades. They did what in them lay. They covered the retreat
of the fugitives, and gave the vanguard of their pursuers a warm reception.
Col. Maxwell, now a prisoner, and a passive spectator, afterward declared
that he had entertained great hopes of being rescued during the short but
deadly strife between the combatants. St. Ruth's feelings were not to be
envied the night of that dismal day; for he must have been sensible that,
owing to his contempt of the enemy, over-weaning confidence, and neglecting
necessary precautions, or not insisting on their execution, he wretchedly
permitted the great stronghold of the king for whom he commanded to be
taken out of his bands.

  "At Ballinasloe (we quote Mr. Cole) he drew up his forces intending to
  make a stand. Sarsfield, backed by the other general officers,
  represented that it was madness to risk a certain defeat there by
  engaging a superior and better disciplined army, flushed with the recent
  conquest of Athlone; that the wiser plan would be to hold Galway and
  Limerick with strong garrisons, to march with the remainder of the
  infantry and all the cavalry into Munster and Leinster, intercept the
  enemy's communications, and perhaps make a dash upon Dublin, which was
  left in a state unprepared for resistance. St. Ruth yielded to their
  remonstrances, and retreated to Aughrim; but here he suddenly and in evil
  hour for his own cause changed his determination, and resolved to risk a
  battle. He was either stung by the loss of Athlone, or prompted by
  personal vanity which whispered to him that he was destined to
  immortalize his name by a great victory."

Having made up his mind to abide the brunt of Ginckel's well-appointed and
well-disciplined and numerous forces, he halted his dispirited but
determined troops on the hill-side of Kilcomedan, about three miles
south-west of Ballinasloe.


  The Field of Aughrim.

Probably most of our readers are in the same predicament with relation to
this hill of dismal memory. They have not looked over that battle-field,
and probably never will, the Great Western railway notwithstanding. So we
borrow the graphic account of a writer who examined the ridge from end to
end, the Danish fort on its summit, and the unlucky old castle, conversed
with an aged man of the village, who had long since spoken with an aged
woman, who when a very young girl had brought some country produce to King
James's soldiers, and had witnessed with terror and curiosity some of the
occurrences of the fatal 12th of July, 1691.

  "The hill of Kilcomedan is in no part very steep. It forms a gradual
  slope extending almost due north and from end to end, a distance of about
  a mile and a half; and at the time of which we speak it was perfectly
  open and covered with heath. Along the crest or this hill was perched the
  Irish camp, and the position in which St. Ruth was resolved to await the
  enemy extended along its base.

{125}

  "The foremost line of the Irish composed entirely of musketeers, occupied
  a series of small enclosures, and was covered in front throughout its
  entire extent by a morass through which flows a little stream, and this
  swamp with difficulty passable by infantry, was wholly so for cavalry.
  Through two passes only was the Irish position thus covered assailable
  upon firm ground, the one at the extreme right much the more open of the
  two, and called the pass of Urrachree from an old house and demesne which
  lay close to it, and the other at the extreme left, by the long straight
  road leading into the town of Aughrim. This road was broken, and so
  narrow that some annalists state that two horses could not pass it
  abreast; in addition to which it was commanded by the castle of Aughrim,
  then as now it is true but a ruin, but whose walls and enclosures
  nevertheless afforded effectual cover, and a position such as ought to
  have rendered the pass impregnable. Beyond those passes at either side
  were extensive bogs, and dividing them the interposing morass. The
  enclosures in which the advanced musketeers were posted, afforded
  excellent cover, and from one to the other communications had been cut,
  and at certain intervals their whole length was traversed by broad
  passages, intended to admit the flanking charge of the Irish cavalry in
  case the enemy's infantry should succeed in forcing their way thus far.
  The main line extended in a double row of columns parallel to the
  advanced position of the musketeers, and the reserve of the cavalry was
  drawn up on a small plain a little behind the castle of Aughrim, which
  was occupied by a force of about two thousand men. The Irish army
  numbered in all, perhaps, about twenty thousand men, and the position
  they held extended more than an English mile, and was indeed as powerful
  a one as could possibly have been selected."

Begging the author's indulgence for this needful theft, we own ourselves
unable to resist the temptation of committing another, especially as, if he
had been under harness himself that day in the Irish camp, he would not
have voluntarily shared in the solemn function so vividly describes:

  "Many of our readers are doubtless aware that the field of Aughrim was
  fought upon a Sunday, a circumstance which added one to the many
  thrilling incidents of the martial scene. The army had hardly moved into
  that position which was that day to be so hardly and devotedly
  maintained, when the solemn service of high mass was commenced at the
  head of every regiment by its respective chaplain; and during this solemn
  ceremonial were arriving at every moment fresh messengers from the
  outposts, their horses covered with dust and foam, with the stern
  intelligence that the enemy were steadily approaching; and amid all this
  excitement and suspense, in silence and bare-beaded, kneeled the devoted
  thousands in the ranks in which they were to receive the foe, and on the
  very ground on which they were in a few hours so desperately to contend.
  This solemn and striking ceremonial under circumstances which even the
  bravest admit to be full of awe, and amid the tramp and neighing of
  horses, and jingling of accoutrements, and the distant trumpet signals
  from the outposts, invested the scene with a wildness and sublimity of
  grandeur, which blanched many a cheek, and fluttered many a heart with
  feelings very different from those of fear."


  The Pass of Urrachree.

A thick vapor, called up from the surrounding bogs and marshes by the hot
morning sun, kept the rival armies concealed from each other's sight till
about 12 o'clock, when, all becoming clear, the men on Kilcomedan had a
full sight of the allied forces, commanded by eight majors-general, and
arranged in double columns, their rich appointments presenting an
unpleasant contrast to their own much more modest if not shabby garb and
accoutrements. As soon as General Ginckel could command a distinct view
from a height toward the left of his lines, he was enabled to judge of the
strength of the position held by the Irish, and the skill shown in the
disposition of the forces adverted to above. He could see one portion of
the cavalry prepared to dispute the pass at Urrachree, another watching the
pass at Aughrim, the main body of horse posted below the crest of the hill,
the infantry still lower disposed in two columns, and he could guess the
presence of musketeers in the ditches at the bottom of the hill, prepared
to receive the hardy infantry who would venture across the morass to
exchange shots with them. Sarsfield's horse beyond the brow of Kilcomedan
on the Irish left, he probably did not observe. There was the shrewd and
fiery chief placed, with strict orders from his unfriendly superior not to
stir from that spot till expressly ordered.
{126}
Had the gallant Dutchman at that moment known that St. Ruth had not
communicated to any of his general officers the scheme be intended to
observe through the engagement, his hopes of victory would have been much
more sanguine. Feeling the inexpediency of commencing a general engagement,
yet impatient of the scene of inactivity before him, he gave orders to a
Danish captain of horse commanding sixteen men to attempt the pass of
Urrachree. The small body was warmly received by some watching cavalry
still fewer in number, and though the brave officer justified the
reputation of his country for dogged courage, his men were deserted by that
virtue so essential to every soldier, and "ran like men."

Ginckel, fully aware of the importance of the pass in case a general
engagement should take place, next directed Colonel Albert Conyngham to
take possession of some ditches near where one branch of the stream entered
the morass. The chief of this party had received orders not to advance
beyond the mere boundary, lest he should be intercepted, and thus bring on
a premature engagement. The Irish party, after receiving the enemy's fire
and returning it, showed their backs, and their assailants pursued them
beyond the limits pointed out by the sagacious De Ginckel. An ambush had
been prepared in expectation of this proceeding, and, while they were least
expecting it, a destructive fire was opened on them from behind cover. Many
immediately dismounted, and, taking advantage of a hedge, returned the fire
with deadly interest. They had little time to enjoy the success of this
move, when they were startled by the rush of a strong cavalry force
sweeping down on them from behind the extremity of the hill, and the old
manor-house of Urrachree. They were obliged to retire in disorder before
this new enemy, but the watchful eye of the justly displeased general had
well marked the progress of the action, and provided for the expected
repulse. D'Eppinger's royal regiment of Holland dragoons came on amain to
get between the pursuing Irish horse and the hill. But other detachments of
Irish cavalry were at hand to frustrate this design; the Earl of Portland's
horse were sent to support the forcing party, and a stern combat was waged
for about an hour, fresh parties joining the strife from the natural
impatience of men of heart to remain still while blows are bandying before
their eyes. At three o'clock this contention came to an end, both sides
having lost several stout partisans, and the relative positions being much
the same as at the beginning of the skirmish.

For the next hour and a half nothing was done on either aide. The English
generals were in close consultation as to whether it were better to renew
the attack or defer it till next morning. The brave old Scotchman, Mackay,
decided his fellow commanders for present action. He counselled a renewed
and more effective attempt at Urrachree, which, causing re-enforcements to
be drawn from the Irish centre and the neighborhood of Aughrim, would
enable the infantry to try the morass where it was narrowest, and also
enable the cavalry on the right wing to force the dangerous pass at
Aughrim, watched by the garrison of the ruined castle.


  The Morass And The Hedges.

At this time (half-past four in the evening) the main body of the English
formed two lines directly before the morass, the generals on each side
having a pretty correct idea of the state and efficiency of their foes. In
other respects the advantage was with the allied army. There was a perfect
cordiality and understanding between De Ginckel and his generals, and even
in the case of his death and that of his second in command the Duke of
Wirtemberg, Mackay, or Talmash, or De Ruvigny were perfectly apprised of
the general plan of the action.

{127}

The Danish horse and a body of infantry were ordered to the extreme left,
with the apparent design to out-flank the enemy on that side, and thus draw
away from the Irish centre and left wing much of the strength there needed.
This body (the Dutch, to wit) kept that postilion during the remainder of
the battle, doing as good service as if actually engaged. Three French
regiments, namely, those of La Mellonière, Du Cambon, and Belcassel,
commenced to assail the advanced forces of the Irish in the neighborhood of
these inactive troops, and obliged St. Ruth to weaken his left and centre
to support them. Except the cannonading from both sides there was no
fighting going on until six o'clock along the entire line, except this in
the neighborhood of Urrachree.

Mackay, in order to weaken still more the Irish left wing, advised Ginckel
to separate a considerable body of horse from Talmash's troops, who were
waiting for a favorable opportunity to tempt the narrow pass toward
Aughrim, and to send them toward Urrachree. This had the desired effect,
and now preparations were made to cross the morass at the narrowest part
and attack the Irish centre.

While detachments of the second line of the left centre of the Irish were
marching to defend the pass at Urrachree, and thus leaving their late
positions comparatively weak, four English regiments, commanded by Colonels
Erie, Herbert, Creighton, and Brewer, effected the passage of the marsh,
and were received by a volley from the men ensconced behind the lowest
fence. Openings (as before mentioned) being ready, these marksman, as soon
as they were dislodged, retired behind the next shelter, and repeated the
process till they had drawn the British soldiers nearly half a mile up the
hill.

Now their orders had been to wait till a much greater force had crossed at
a wider portion of the morass lower down (that is, near Aughrim, the stream
in the centre of the morass flowing in that direction), and effected a
junction with them. So when they saw their cunning enemies, joined by the
main central force, and these again backed by cavalry, all preparing to
sweep down on them, they remembered too late the wise orders they had
received. However, if the charging party were Irish wolf-hounds, the
charged were English bull-dogs, and determined to make courage repair evil
done by rashness. The gallant Colonel Erie cried out: "There is no way to
come off but to be brave!" But neither the courage of the men nor the
ability of the leaders could resist the downward charge of horse and foot,
and the flanking bullets that rained on them. Colonels Erie and Herbert and
some captains were taken prisoners and rescued, and recaptured, and we are
sorry to record that Colonel Herbert was killed while prisoner, from
apprehension of his rescue. The English did not or could not make use of
the fences in their downward flight, as their pursuers had done when
enticing them upward, but were driven, as it were, by press of men till the
survivors once more gained the bog.

Meantime five regiments, for whose safe lodgment these rash men ought to
have waited, had crossed the wider part of the morass lower down, under the
command of the veteran Major-General Mackay and Prince George of Hesse.
This fiery young warrior was ordered by his senior to keep his division
stationary in a cornfield until he himself should have made a sufficient
_detour_ to the right among difficult ground and to attack the enemy
in flank while Prince George was assailing them in front.

The same error as that just previously committed by the staid English
colonels was repeated by the impetuous young German prince. Being fired at
and probably jeered or mocked by the ditch holders he advanced to chastise
them, and both parties came to such close quarters that the ends of their
muskets nearly touched.
{128}
Back went the Irish musketeers, after them pushed the assailants, new
shelter taken, fresh shots fired, fresh dislodgments, no attention paid by
Englander or foreigner till they found themselves surrounded and assailed
front, flank, and rear, by the Irish. There was a skirmishing retreat made
till the corn-field was reached by the survivors, some even whose care for
self overpowered love of fame or fighting, never stayed till they had put
the morass between themselves and the pestilent hedgemen.

General Mackay, having mastered the difficulties before him, was in hopes
of having the Irish foe between himself and the holders of the cornfield,
but was thunderstruck on his return at the demoralized condition of his
rash friends. He sent to request aid from General Talmash, and the three
parties renewed a desperate onslaught on the musketeers who occupied the
fences. They were received with the same determined resolution and deadly
fire as on the two former occasions, and were obliged by the close and
uninterrupted musket volleys and flank charges of horse to fall back on the
cornfield, the marsh, and even to the dry ground on the eastern side on a
line with the English batteries.

Three times did the tide of battle flow and ebb across the bog on that
memorable afternoon, each party inspired with the dogged determination and
hate that a struggle for life and for a darling cause inspired. Even the
Williamite chaplain was obliged in a manner to do justice to the bravery of
the Irish enemy. Describing the beginning of the attack, he says:--

  "The _Irish_ in the meantime laid so close in their ditches that
  several were doubtful whether they had any men at that place or not, but
  they were convinced of it at last, for no sooner were the _French_
  and the rest got within twenty yards or less of the ditches, but the
  _Irish_ fired most furiously upon them, which our men as bravely
  sustained, and pressed forward, though they could scarce see one another
  for smoak. And now the thing seemed so doubtful for some time that the
  by-standers would rather have given it on the Irish side, for they had
  driven our foot in the centre so far that they were got almost in a line
  with some of our great guns planted near the bog, which we had not the
  benefit of at that juncture, because of the mixture of our men and
  theirs."

During the continuance of this deadly strife in the centre, De Ginckel was
directing the efforts of the foreign auxiliaries against the defenders of
Urrachree. The general himself, regardless of his own safety, exposed his
life on more than one occasion. He was re-enforced more than once from the
left, but all that the greatest skill and energy on the part of himself and
his generals, and bravery on the part of their men could effect, were
insufficient to remove the Irish cavalry from their ground of vantage. Next
to this mingled war of cavalry and infantry, and nearer the centre, the
French infantry regiments of La Mellonière, Du Camben, and Belcassel
struggled, like the fiery stout fellows they were, to drive the Irish
infantry opposed to them from their ditches. They (the French) fortified
their positions when any advantage was gained by _chevaux de frise_,
but these were again and again taken and destroyed by their opponents.
Scarcely did any portion of the mingled peoples suffer so much in the
deadly struggle at Aughrim as these gallant Frenchmen. Had De Ginckel's
cavalry, and these French infantry, succeeded in dislodging their
opponents, they would then be in a position to take the Irish centre in
flank, and bring the struggle to a speedy close, but this was not the mode
in which it was the will of Providence to decide the day.

Where was St. Ruth employed during these momentous struggles? Just where he
should have been, in front of his camp near the crest of the hill, watching
the fluctuations of the battle, issuing orders, and sending aid wherever
they were needed. Our chaplain says that he was so pleasurably excited by
the charges of his central infantry to the very line of the British
batteries that he flung his gold-laced hat into the air, extolling the
bravery of the Irish infantry, and exclaiming that "he would now drive back
the English to the gates of Dublin."

{129}

  How the Pass of Aughrim was Forced.

So far the Irish forces were sustained in their gallant struggle; but now
the scale of fortune began to waiver. Their final defeat began in a quarter
from which it was totally unlooked for by either themselves or their
antagonists. The castle of Aughrim, so well garrisoned, looked on a narrow
pass crossed by the stream before mentioned, but a little to the S. E. this
isthmus of firm land opened out to a tolerably wide space "in the shape of
a spindle furnished with its complement of thread." Here at about this time
of the fight, the extreme right of the English force planted some cannon,
and cleared of its defenders the gorge of the isthmus just between them and
the space before the castle. So far a step was made in the right direction;
they were enabled to make the next by the stupidity or treachery of an
officer who had been directed to send to Urrachree a detachment from the
second or rear line of the army toward the left. Along with this complement
he sent away a battalion from the front line; [Footnote 33] and this being
remarked by the English officers, three infantry battalions making use of
hurdles, slipped across the edge of the morass in front of the castle,
[Footnote 34] and took possession of a cornfield on the Irish side. The
Irish musketeers stationed behind the hedges in that quarter, aware of the
wide breach in the main columns behind them, retreated after delivering one
discharge, and took refuge in the hollow near the castle, the post of the
reserve cavalry. A troop of these coming to the rescue, the Englishmen took
to the shelter of the hedges where they had little to fear from a charge.

    [Footnote 33: Colonel Henry Luttrell having had to do in this transfer
    of the front line force where they were needed, gave a color to the
    tradition of his having "sold the pass at Aughrim."]

    [Footnote 34: Let it be borne in mind that the castle was on the north
    side of the narrow road or pass, and that its defenders had before
    their eyes the N.E. side of Kilcomedan and the morass so often
    mentioned. The village of Aughrim lay to the west of the castle, and
    Irish reserve force partly between castle and village.]

This successful manoeuver encouraged the passage of two other regiments
nearer to the centre, namely, those commanded by Lord George Hamilton and
Sir Henry Belasyse, and the moment seemed favorable for the approach of the
cavalry through the defile which they had cleared of its guards as already
mentioned. They were accompanied by infantry, who not being restricted to
the narrow limit of the boggy road, were prepared to fire on all the
visible defenders of the occupants of the outer works of the place. After
all, it is really difficult to account for the apparently rash movement.
There were 2,000 men in and about the castle, and two field-pieces were in
readiness to rake the pass in front. What possibility was there that a line
of horsemen two or three abreast, unable to return the fire of the
protected enemy, could escape destruction? We knew that small parties of
men have exposed their lives as on forlorn-hope enterprises, but here were
whole regiments.

Could it be that the leaders were aware that the danger to be incurred did
not exceed in degree the ordinary risks of warfare?

The chaplain says in reference to the apparent danger of the attempt:

  "The French general seeing our men attempt to do this, askt, '_What
  they meant by it?_ and being answered that they would certainly
  endeavor to pass there, and attack him on the left, he is said to reply
  with an oath, 'They are brave fellows; it's a pity they should be so
  exposed.'"

It is very probable that the words were uttered by the general, for the
long file of horses and cavaliers were distant only thirty yards from the
sheltered marksmen.

The adventurous bands owed their safety to a direct interposition of
Providence, to a detestable deed of treachery, or to the grossest piece of
negligence or stupidity in the annals of warfare.

{130}

We are told that Colonel Walter Bourke, commander of the garrison, having
sent to the camp for ammunition, four barrels of gunpowder and four of
bullets were sent to him. But when the barrels of ball were opened, on the
approach of the enemy, the eyes of the men engaged in the operation were
blasted by the sight of cannon-balls! The confusion and misery of the
defenders, officers and men, may scarcely be comprehended. However, they
resorted to the only means in their power. To supply ammunition they loaded
with buttons, with nails, with bits of stone, with their ramrods when all
else was expended, and did what execution they could.

The infantry regiments of Hamilton and Kirke, having found materials at
hand, barricaded a wide opening on the east side of the castle, in order to
prevent a charge on the cannon when passing from the Irish reserve in the
rere, and then they took possession of a dry ditch, whence they dislodged
the defenders of the castle's outworks, whose ammunition was expended, and
who for their misfortune lived before the bayonet was invented.

The Irish reserve, hearing from the fugitives how things were going on,
sped round to the opening on their left, through which they might charge on
the advancing artillery train; but there they found themselves checkmated
by the barrier set up by the English infantry. They wheeled round, and,
having made the circuit of the castle, they found themselves face to face
with Lord Oxford's regiment, who, under Sir Francis Compton, had already
gained the open ground. A brisk engagement took place, and the English
cavalry were twice driven back, but, being soon re-enforced by the horse
and dragoons of De Rouvigny, Langston, Byerly, and Levingston, they made
good their footing, several being slain on both sides.

It may well be supposed that St. Ruth was not a little surprised to see the
narrow and dangerous passage so well and safely achieved, and the lodgment
effected at the bottom of the hill by the English infantry. Still there was
nothing very disheartening in all this. He was at the head of a fine body
of cavalry; only four squadrons of the enemy had as yet effected a standing
at the north-east extremity of the hill; he and his troopers would charge
down and annihilate the rash intruders; and if need were, he could easily
summon the brave Earl of Lucan and his horse, who had been kept inactive to
this moment, and dared not stir till the word was given.

Here a tirade might very appropriately come in against the spite of fortune
toward the Irish cause, and particularly toward the aspirations of the
single-minded and heroic Patrick Sarsfield. He had been kept at the fight
of the Boyne in attendance on the king; at Aughrim he sat his horse on one
side of Kilcomedan while the exciting battle game was being played at the
other, and in neither case had he an opportunity of charging, or ordering
to charge, or directing a movement, or striking a blow. A complete insight
into the workings of his troubled and ireful heart on these days would not
be desirable.


  One Shot Decides the Victory.

The general, doomed to enjoy but a few minutes more of existence, was
radiant with confident hope. Preparing for the final swoop, he cried, "They
are beaten; let us beat them to the purpose!" He gave some directions to an
artillery officer, placed himself at the head of his guard, and was about
to give the command to charge when his head was blown to pieces by a
cannon-ball!

Does not it now seem an easy thing for the next in command then to have
sent at once to Lord Lucan, inform him of the fatal accident, and summon
him to take the chief command? It was a simple matter to charge on the
advancing columns, and through superiority in number and fresh untired
forces render what they had effected of no avail. No. A cloak was laid over
the body, and it was conveyed to the rere; part of the guard accompanied
it, and the rest soon followed.

{131}

The historians do not agree on the final resting-place of the body of the
gallant but ill-advised Frenchman, but the probability is that it was
conveyed to Athenry and interred in its roofless church; peace to his
memory! [Footnote 35]

    [Footnote 35: From the Green Book of Mr. O'Callachan, we extract
    (abridged) a curious traditional passage connected with the death of
    St. Ruth. The day before the battle, a neighboring gentlemen, by name
    O'Kelly, presented himself before him demanding payment of sundry sheep
    driven off his lands by the soldiers. The general refused, alleging
    that he should not grudge food to the men who were fighting for him and
    his country. O'Kelly persisting, the general used harsh language, and
    the other turning to his herdsman, bade him in Irish to mark St. Ruth
    and his appearance. "You are robbed, master," said the herd, "but
    anyhow, ask for the skins." These were needed by the soldiers for bed
    furniture, and all that master and herd obtained by the second request
    was a preemptory order to be gone. They obeyed and sought the English
    general, who recommended them to the care of a certain artillery
    officer named Trench. When the passage before the castle was made,
    Trench got his piece of ordinance fixed in an advantageous place on the
    edge of the marsh by means of planking, and as soon as the treacherous
    herd caught sight of St. Ruth he cried out, "Take aim! There he is, a
    man dressed like a bandsman." One wheel of the carriage being lower
    than was requisite, Trench put his boot under it, and everything being
    adjusted aim was taken, and O'Kelly and his herd got their revenge, and
    the favor of the ruling powers.]

However unaccountable it may seem, Sarsfield received no intelligence of
St. Ruth's death till it was too late to repair the mischance. Meanwhile
the English who had crossed at Aughrim found time to assist their
struggling friends in the centre, and the musketeers were gradually driven
upward. The main body of Irish infantry on right of the centre were as much
discouraged by the death of Rev. Dr. Stafford, an energetic chaplain, as
the guards had been by that of the commander-in-chief. The right wing at
Urrachree, after incessant fighting, were obliged to retreat before the
increasing numbers of their assailants released from duty elsewhere, and
the English and Danish cavalry at Urrachree were at leisure to relieve the
Huguenot infantry on their right from the fierce attacks of the Irish
infantry to whom they had been opposed.

It was now past sunset and the rout of King James's adherents had become
general, the last to retreat being the infantry next to Urrachree, who had
done such good service against the regiments of La Mellonière, Du Cambon,
and Belcassel.


  After the Battle.

The infantry fled to the protection of the large red bog on their left, and
the cavalry made an orderly retreat south-west, along the road to Loughrea.
The poor infantry were slaughtered without mercy by the pursuing cavalry,
but a thick mist mercifully sent saved the lives of many. An ingenious
diversion in their favor was made by a brave and thoughtful officer of the
old race of O'Reilly, who, getting on a small eminence, sounded the charge
for battle, and stopped for a few minutes the bloody pursuit. One skilled
in the domestic economy of battles may explain why the Irish cavalry did
not combine and present a strong and effective obstacle to the English
horse, while the poor fellows on foot were getting away under their
shelter. The present writer being a mere civilian can allege no sufficient
reason. Neither does he seek to excuse the party to whom the garrison in
the old castle surrendered. Two thousand living men occupied the premises
in the morning, and of these (the few killed excepted) only the commander,
Walter Bourke, eleven officers, and forty soldiers, were granted their
lives. To account for the absence of mercy on the English side it was
asserted that NO QUARTER was among the instructions given to the Irish
before the battle. We are not in condition to decide whether the fact was
so or not.

The number of killed and wounded on both sides is variously estimated.
Story says the Irish loss was 7,000. Others state it at 4,000. Captain
Parker, on the English side, says that there were slain of the allied
troops, about 3,000. This is a problem in the solution of which we feel no
interest.
{132}
We are gratified by the heroism displayed on both sides, and our
gratification would be much enhanced by finding it recorded that when
resistance ceased, quarter was generously granted. With few exceptions this
was not the case. Ardent partisan as the chaplain was, we are sure that his
better feelings were stirred by what he looked on "three days after when
all our own and some of theirs were interred."

  "I reckoned in some small enclosures 150, in others 120, &c., lying most
  of them by the ditches where they were shot, and the rest from the top of
  the hill, where their camp had been, looked like a great flock of sheep,
  shattered up and down the countrey for almost four miles round."

Were we sure of keeping our temper we would here commence a lay sermon on
the iniquity of those, whether emperors, kings, presidents, or evil
oouncillors, who for wretched objects, in which vanity or covetousness has
chief share, arm myriads of children of the great human family against each
others' lives, and feel neither pity nor remorse at the sight of poor naked
human remains, flung broadcast over heath, and moors, and hill-sides, like
grey stones, or the scattered sheep of our chaplain's illustration.

The English occupiers of the ground after the battle buried only their own
dead, unless where the presence of the other bodies interfered with their
convenience, and as the inhabitants of the neighborhood had quitted their
homes when the expectation of a battle became strong, the bodies of the
Irish soldiers remained above ground till nothing but the bones were left.
We quote an affecting incident from our chaplain relative to this sad
condition of things:

  "Many dogges frequented the place long afterwards, and became so fierce
  by feeding upon man's flesh, that it became dangerous for any single man
  to pass that way. And there is a true and remarkable story of a greyhound
  (wolfhound?) belonging to an _Irish_ officer. The gentleman was
  killed and stripped in the battle, whose body the dog remained by, night
  and day; and though he fed upon other corps with the rest of the dogs,
  yet, he would not allow them or anything else to touch that of his
  master. When all the corps were consumed all the dogs departed, but this
  used to go in the night to the adjacent villages for food, and presently
  to return to the place where his master's bones were only then left. And
  thus he continued till January following, when one of Col. Faulk's
  soldiers being quartered nigh hand, and going that that way by chance,
  the dog, fearing he came to disturb his master's bones, flew upon the
  soldier, who being surprised at the suddenness of the thing, unslung his
  piece thereupon his back and killed the poor dog."

Though our drama cannot conclude till the articles come to be signed at
Limerick, the fight we have endeavored to describe with full justice to
both parties, may be considered the catastrophe or _denouement_ of the
piece, no engagement of its magnitude or so decisive in its results having
taken place afterward.


  From Aughrim to Limerick

Sarsfield, at the head of the cavalry and some infantry, proceeded to
Limerick after the defeat of Aughrim; D'Usson conducted the main body of
the infantry to Galway, before which city De Ginckel arrived on the 20th of
the month. D'Usson had but few of the qualities requisite for a good
military chief, and negotiations were entered on next day, the Irish
evacuating the city, and the English general allowing them to proceed to
Limerick with the honors of war, and all the conveniences in his power to
afford them.

After Baldearg O'Donnel had much excited the expectations of the country
being freed through his valor and wisdom, he is found at this time a mere
chief of straggling parties, a greater terror to the natives by their
exactions than to the common enemy. He opened a correspondence with the
English general, and like some modern patriots was rewarded for the
annoyance he had hitherto given the English Government by a valuable
pension for life.

{133}

Such was not the system acted on by our brave old acquaintance, Thigue
O'Regan, now a knight, and Governor of Sligo. Baldearg having deserted his
old-fashioned and loyal associate, Sir Thigue found himself on the 13th of
September at the head of 600 men and provided with twelve days' food, the
town and part of the citadel in the enemy's hands, and 5,000 fresh men sent
against him by Lord Granard ready to smash his fortifications, or starve
him into a sense of his condition. The little man of the long periwig, red
cloak, and plumed hat, had a head as well as a heart. He capitulated and
received all the respect due to loyalty and courage. He and his garrison
were conducted out with honor, their twelve days' provisions (their own
residue) given them, and all conveniences supplied them for their march to
Limerick. To honor the peppery old knight, the same terms were granted to
all the little garrisons in that country.

Omitting negotiations, marches, and petty affairs, important only to those
concerned, we come to De Ginckel's camp at Cariganless (as our chaplain
spells the name) in his progress to Limerick. On August 25th, the army left
that town.


  Limerick's Last Defence.

On the 26th of August the besiegers of Limerick were at their posts, and on
the 30th the bombardment commenced. It was so severe and spread such
devastation within Irish town that many inhabitants took their beds and
migrated to the English town within the arms of the river, and Lords
Justices and delicate ladies and sundry lovers of quiet set up their rest
two miles inland in Clare. On the 10th of September forty yards of the
defending wall of English town were reduced to rubbish, but the arm of the
river was in the way, and no assault followed.

September 15th a bridge of boats was laid across the Shannon toward
Annabeg, and a large detachment of English horse and foot crossed to the
right bank of the Shannon. These took up their station beyond
Thomond-bridge, the Irish cavalry, whose place that was, being obliged to
remove to Sixmile-bridge. The laying of the bridge and the passage of the
detachment were effected through the gross negligence or treachery of
Brigadier Clifford, who was tried by a court martial for the offence. He
acknowledged the negligence, but stoutly denied the treason. Colonel Henry
Luttrell [Footnote 36] proved traitor without any doubt, and was kept close
prisoner till King James's will could be ascertained. Before that time came
the fortress was given up and Luttrell set at liberty. England rewarded him
for his intentions; and his name has since been a word of ill-omen in the
mouths of the Irish peasantry.

    [Footnote 36: This is the same Colonel Luttrell who sold the pass at
    Aughrim, as before mentioned. Ed. C. W.]

22d. De Ginckel attacked the Irish post on the Clare side of
Thomond-bridge. The three regiments of Kirke, Tiffin, and Lord George
Hamilton, overpowered Colonel Lacy with his 700 men, and when these sought
shelter in the city, they found themselves shut out by the town major, a
Frenchman, who feared that the foes would enter pell-mell with the friends.
Little quarter was given, and only 130 got the privilege of being made
prisoners of war. This is one of those instances in which the Irish party
suffered so fatally from the treachery or detestable negligence of some
among themselves.

The Duke of Tyrconnel died at the residence of D'Usson during the siege.

This was the last trial of arms between the friends of William and James in
Ireland. Next day a truce was agreed on and preliminaries of peace
commenced. With the "Conditions of Limerick," a dismal household word with
the peasantry of Ireland from that hour to the present, we shall not
meddle. They do not come within our scope, which merely embraces the
stirring events of the three years' campaign, our design being to present
these in a picturesque and interesting light, and in a spirit of genuine
impartiality. This being our design, we have seized on everything that
could reflect honor or credit on the chiefs of both parties, or the conduct
of the common soldiers. We have found much more rancor and want of humanity
distinguishing both parties, the military chiefs excepted, then we could
wish. These we have softened as much as truth would permit. No one reading
our sketches but will, as we hope, think better of the party whose
principles he repudiates, than he did before the perusal.

------

{134}

    Original


    Asperges Me.

    by Richard Storrs Willis.


  I

  Prostrate at thy altar kneeling,
  Not a thought or fault concealing,
  Hear me cry with inmost feeling,
    _Domine, asperges me!_
  Ah! What sins I come confessing,
  Since I last received thy blessing!
  Yet with all this guilt oppressing,
    Still I pled _asperges me!_

  II

  Sins of thought, of word, of action,
  Many a righteous law's infraction,
  Many an hour of wild distraction--
    _Domine, asperges me!_
    Oft I think can Christ forgive me--
    With such guilt can he receive me?
    What if my fond heart deceive me--
      _Dare_ I plead _asperges me!_

  III

  Come I must, for thou dost bid me!
  Ne'er for coming hast thou chid me!
  From my guilt, ah! quickly rid me--
    _Domine, asperges me!_
  That my heavy heart grow lighter.
  That my love for thee burn brighter,
  That my soul than snow grow whiter,
    _Domine, asperges me!_

------

{135}

    From The Month.

    Ancor-Viat--A New Giant City.


If any would-be discoverer of ancient monuments is envious of the laurels
of Mr. Layard and other celebrities of the same class, let him at once set
out by the overland route, and make his way as fast as he can to
Ancor-Viat. Few people have yet heard of it, but if what is said of it be
true, it must be simply the most stupendous collection of magnificent
monuments in the world. If the traveller in Central America, who, like Mr.
Stephens, quits the beaten tracks and plunges into the depths of vast
forests, is amazed at the ruins of Copan, Palenque, Uxmal, and Chichen,
with their huge truncated pyramids, palaces, corridors, and sculptured
bas-reliefs, he would, it seems, be still more surprised if he extended his
researches to the Empire of Annam, and, advancing toward the utmost
boundary of Cambodia, where it skirts Thibet, he came, mounted on an
elephant, to the gigantic temples and forests of marble pillars which mark
the site of which we speak. It was thus that a French officer in the
service of the King of Siam recently visited the spot; and the account he
has given of it may be found in the Revue de l'Architecture, and is in
great part reproduced in the Revue Contemporaine of December, 1866. No
European writer before him has ever mentioned it, and in reading his
letters we must make allowances for possible exaggeration. He is a mandarin
of the third class, and has obtained the rank of general in command of the
Siamese army. M. Perrin (for such is his name) proposes revisiting
Ancor-Viat with a complete photographic apparatus; and when he has done
this, and had given us the pleasure of examining his photographs, we shall
be better able to judge of his veracity. Meanwhile the editor of the Revue
Contemporaine is of opinion that the clearness and simplicity of his
account leaves little room for doubting its truth.

When M. Perrin first visited Ancor-Viat, he saw nothing of its ancient
splendor; for in "Indian China," as in Central America, monuments of large
dimensions and great beauty are often unknown to the people who dwell
within a few hundred yards of them. The concourse of intelligent and
wealthy travellers alone teaches ignorant natives the value of their own
surroundings. On his second journey M. Perrin's attention was directed to
the ruins by a curious circumstance. The King of Kokien pays a yearly
tribute to the King of Siam in kind, and among the articles saltpetre
figures largely. In the whole of India beyond the Ganges--in the Birman
Empire, Siam, Malacca, and Annam--the people, children-like, have a
passion for fireworks, and consequently consume a large quantity of
saltpetre. Now the excrement of bats and night-birds that haunt in great
abundance the cities of the dead furnishes, it seems, a copious supply of
this substance, and is, in fact, as fruitful in the production of squibs
and rockets as guano--the dung of Peruvian sea-birds--is in the cultivation
of corn and rye. It is collected by malefactors who work in chains, and is
dissolved in water mixed with ashes. After some days the water and ashes,
with the macerated dung strongly impregnated with ammonia, is passed
through tight sieves, and exposed in big caldrons to the action of huge
fires.
{136}
The entire substance then evaporates leaving behind it crystals of
saltpetre. The East was famous of old for the manufacture of nitre; and we
have all have noticed how it forms spontaneously on the walls of stables,
slaughter-houses, cellars, and the like, from the decomposition of animal
matter, and even from the breath and sweat of beasts.

No wonder M. Perrin was struck as a foreigner by the strange spectacle of
convicts collecting bird-dung. The birds of night have a strong affinity
for ruins, and crumbling towers and terraces are--to use an expression of
Virgil's--

  "Dirarum nidis domus opportuna volucrum."

It was along the northern part of the great city of Ancor-Viat that M.
Perrin halted frequently to watch the culprits of Cambodia plying their
foul task. During six days of elephant march he travelled on without coming
to the end of the city. Here and there be penetrated into the ruins where
explorers had opened a passage. No one, he says, would believe him if he
told all be saw. The monuments, the palaces, the temples, the pillars,
stairs, and blocks of marble pass description. The circle of the ruins was
computed by the people of the country at ten or twelve leagues in diameter.
Now considering that London, with its three millions of inhabitants,
measures about eleven miles from east to west, and that Ancor-Viat by this
calculation covered about three times as much ground, there must have been
a pretty large concourse of human beings under the shadow of its colossal
halls. It may have been the capital of an empire; it may have been an
empire in itself. There, doubtless, as in the ancient cities of Mexico, the
rich and the great dwelt in spacious edifices, with gardens and groves
enclosed, while the poorer sort herded together in huts like those of the
rudest tribes of Indians. There were no parliaments and philanthropic
societies then to look after the dwellings of the poor; as space was no
object in those days, they made up for straitened accommodation at home by
plenty of spare room for building within the walls. Subaltern officers in
the British army in Ceylon, who have surveyed that island of late years,
report cities of enormous size, and covered in with jungle, as inviting
excavation. Anarajaphpoorra, they tell us, must have been larger than
London, and Polonarooa (be indulgent to the spelling, ye students of
Cingalee!) contains statues of Anak height. The recumbent Buddha in the
last of these two cities is 24 feet in length, and the Buddhist temples,
built of a kind of granite, are huge in proportion. What bullock-power and
elephant-power it must have required to move blocks of stone so unwieldy in
an age when machinery and engineering were unknown! What thews must these
Titans have had, before the time of eastern effeminacy, to build their
towers of uncemented ashlars piled up like "Pelion upon Ossa"! M. Perrin
assures us that he saw in Ancor-Viat temples in a good state of
preservation, but overrun with weeds and shrubs, which measured a league in
circuit. Pillars rose around him on every side, tall as cedars, and all in
marble. The stairs, though partly buried under the soil, still mounted much
higher than the noble flights one sees at Versailles or on the Piazza di
Spagna at Rome. The buildings in some places were as solid as if they had
been raised yesterday. According to local tradition, they are four or five
thousand years old; and yet, but for lightning and the overgrowth of
luxuriant vegetation, they would even at this day be perfect and intact.
"Oh! that I had brought a photographic apparatus with me!" exclaims this
traveller. "I assure you, whether you believe it or no, that the most
famous monuments ancient or modern which we can boast of are mere sheds
compared with what I have seen: our palaces, our basilicas, the Vatican,
Colosseum, and the like, are just dog-kennels to it, and nothing more!"

{137}

If we had never heard of the Indian cities of Central America which the
tribes are supposed to have deserted six or seven hundred years ago, when
warned by their priests of the coming of the Spaniards, we might feel
disposed to reject M. Perrin's account as no less fabulous than the travels
of Baron Munchausen. But when we follow the steps of Captain Del Rio and
Captain Du Paix, and still more those of Mr. Stephens in Chiapas and
Yucatan; when we see them working their way through dense forests in
Honduras with fire and axe, and arriving at a wall six hundred feet long
and from sixty to ninety in height, forming one side of an oblong enclosure
called the Temple, while the other three sides are formed by a succession
of pyramids and terraced walls that measure from thirty to a hundred and
forty feet in height, we are not easily repelled by any report of ancient
cities merely because the measurements in it run very high. There was a
phase in the history of civilization when half barbarous races who knew not
the use of iron, delighted in constructing lasting monuments, and made up
for beauty of detail by huge proportions, and for writing and hieroglyphics
by picture-painting. M. Perrin may be guilty of great exaggeration, but we
ought not to charge him with it too hastily. Modern research has more than
verified all that the Spaniards vaguely reported of the cities of the West,
where immense artificial mounds are crowned with stately palaces, and the
dauntless industry of former races is proved by the provision they made for
water supply in a dry and thirsty land--by the vast reservoirs for water
which have been excavated, and are found to be paved and lined with
stone--by the pits around the ponds intended to furnish supplies or water
when the upper basin was empty in the height of summer--by the wells hidden
deep in the rock, and reached by the patient water-carriers by pathways cut
in the mountain to a depth or 450 feet, and conducting them to that depth
by windings 1400 feet in length--by the long ladders, made of rough rounds
of wood and bound together with osiers, up which the Indians carried, and
still carry, on their backs from these deep sources the water requisite for
the consumption of 7,000 persons or more, according to the size of the
villages, during four months of the year--and by the subterranean chambers,
which the Indians of old probably used as granaries for maize, and which
were made, like the ingenious cisterns just spoken of, by slaves obedient
to more intelligent masters. These and similar discoveries in America add a
color of probability to the description M. Perrin has given of Ancor-Viat
in Asia. At the same time we would rather he had not forgotten his
photographic machine.

"I was anxious," he says, "to ascend to a temple that seemed tolerably
perfect. There were eleven staircases, of I know not how many stairs each,
to reach the first five only of peristyles! I began climbing at half-past
six in the morning, and at half-past seven I had barely been able to
examine two or three of the lower apartments. I was obliged to shorten my
stay, fearing that I should have to descend the stairs while the sun was
hot. All the walls are sculptured and ornamented. The first effect the
ruins produced on me was that of stupefaction. Yet I am not a man to cry
out with astonishment at trifles. The following day I went up by a winding
staircase to the top of an immense tower situated on a height, from whence
I enjoyed a good view of the surrounding remains. In hollows and parts
where one cannot penetrate there are palaces of colossal height and
grandeur. I had an excellent opera-glass, and could observe the details. An
untold store of architectural treasures was before me, stretching as far as
the frontier of Cambodia, which is ten or twelve leagues off! Just think
what Paris would be in ruins. Heaps of stones and ashlars scattered over a
surface no more than two or three leagues in diameter. Here there is on the
ground, and under the ground, marble, already hewn, enough to build after
the fashion of giants all the cities in the universe!"

{138}

This is indeed a climax; and one needs to pause and take breath before
following M. Perrin any further up his winding stairs. Can we attach any
credit to one who is so lavish in the use of words and figures? He has
evidently a supreme disregard for nice distinctions, and ordinary measures
of time and place. Marble enough in Ancor-Viat to build all the cities in
the world? _C'est un peu fort, M. Perrin._ But let us hear him to the
end. We can believe a good deal about cities excavated or still
underground, for we have seen several such with our own eyes; but credulity
itself has its limits. "I saw," M. Perrin continues, "the leg of a statue
the great toe of which measured eleven times my fowling-piece in the
length. It is in marble, like the rest of the figure; there is no other
stones here used for building, except colored stones, which are employed as
borders or for the eyes of statues. There are pedestals with flights of
steps, of which the crowning images have disappeared, as high and as large
as St. Germain l'Auxerrois. Fancy octagonal pyramids cut short at half
their proper height--all in marble, recollect. Who the devil raised all
this? If it was some famous dynasty, it cannot be very well satisfied with
the oblivion into which it has fallen, in spite of its sumptuous monuments.
What are the ruins of Palenque, or even Thebes with its hundred gates, or
of Babylon, compared with this unknown city without history and without
name?"

Now, setting aside Thebes and Babylon, it may be well to compare what we
really know of Palenque with the general's singular account of Ancor-Viat.
It is more than a hundred years since the Spaniards first heard of it from
the Indians, and the reports of its extent differ as widely now as they did
then. The natives say the ruins cover an area of sixty miles; Du Paix and
Del Rio seven leagues; and Waldeck about three miles. But though travellers
are not agreed as to their extent, they are quite unanimous as to the
remains themselves. All admit that they are "unique, extraordinary, and
mournfully beautiful." The largest building is on a mound forty feet high,
raised by the hands of man, originally faced with stones, and measuring 310
feet by 260 at the base. It is richly adorned with paintings in the style
proper to the ancient cities of Mexico; the corridors are sumptuous, the
flights of steps broad, and the figures of giant proportions, uncouth and
expressive of suffering. The tallest statue, however, that has been
discovered is only ten feet six inches high, by which it appears that the
stone figures of Mexican Indians were dwarfish compared with the huge
heroes and idols of the East. M. Perrin had been questioned about the
existence of religious monuments in the eastern Peninsula of India, and the
answers which he returned are as follows: "Sacred stones are found here.
Some of them are simply rocks which at some period or other were
sufficiently soft to receive very clearly the impressions of the feet of
men and animals. Of this sort the one most highly venerated is that of the
Buddhist monastery at Phrabat. An immense number of pilgrims visit it
annually. Others are enormous monoliths raised on socles roughly quarried.
If there ever were any inscriptions, they have been effaced. I have also
seen here gateways or arches of triumph built of huge stones laid one upon
another. What giants or what machines moved these immense blocks? They
stand alone. Not a vestige of any building is near them. Sometimes there
are not even any quarries to be found within a great distance. I saw two
such monuments as those I now speak of among the Stiengs, when I conducted
a military expedition against them. They stood in the midst of marshy and
almost impassable forests, and had certainly never before been seen by any
European.
{139}
Some of the people of Laos had spoken to me of these remains, but I very
nearly missed seeing them. The difficulties in the way of getting to them
were so great that at first I did not think they would be worth the
trouble. But they amply repaid me. I examined them most carefully with a
powerful glass. They did not appear to bear any inscriptions. Even the
luxuriant vegetation of the tropics had been unable to disjoint them. What
roots could rend asunder these stones laid one upon the other without
cement, and raise so heavy a weight? The side-supports were, I believe, as
high as the top-stone laid across was long. The soil is evidently raised by
the vigorous growth that marks the vegetation of these forests. These
remains must rest on monolith socles or on the rock, or on gigantic
foundations; for the ground on the surface is so soft and wet that you may
easily thrust a cane into it up to the handle."

When M. Perrin inquired of the natives who reared these monuments, they
replied the Gai; and by the Gai they meant some barbarous white men, who
came from the land of perpetual snow, who were as tall as three Siamese,
and whose fingers and toes, though articulated, were not separate from one
another. They rode on horses double the size of those now seen, but bones
of which are often found in the earth. Impious men were these Gai; they
hunted elephants, and feasted on their flesh; they offered sacrifices of
blood to their gods. Chinese merchants informed the general that monuments
of the same huge description are to be found in the north and west of
China, and that the people there call them "giants' stones." The traveller
in Central America is, we know, sometimes amazed to find monstrous blocks
evidently hewn by the hands of men, yet hundreds of leagues distant from
any calcareous strata. Men in the neighborhood who are learned in other
matters are quite at fault when their opinion respecting them is asked.
Some will tell you that the nature of the soil is changed from what it was
before the conquest, and others that the Incas had means of transport
unknown to us. Probably there are quarries of granite under the surface of
the savannas; but how the Indians could extract the stone without gunpowder
or machinery is a problem we are unable to solve.

Important discoveries are not always due to scientific and discerning men.
The earliest accounts of anything new and surprising are likely to be
overdrawn; but they are not the less valuable from this circumstance. Their
very exaggeration may stimulate inquiry, and thus be an advantage rather
than otherwise in the outset. It was a poor Tungusian fisherman who
discovered the most perfect specimen of the mammoth near the mouth of the
river Lena, nearly seventy years ago, and his sale of the creature's tusks
for fifty rubles led to an accurate knowledge of the monster's structure
and habits, as well as to a great extension of the trade in ivory derived
from mammoths' tusks. General Perrin's testimony appears to us well worthy
of attention, in spite of its being highly colored here and there. It may,
on the whole, fall far short of the reality, and may lead to the solution
of questions of importance in oriental history.


--------

    Original

    On the Planting of the Cross.

  Dig deep: the tree will surely grow,
    And spread its branches far and wide;
  No tree had e'er such fruit to show,
    Nor with its shade so much to hide.

--------

{140}


    Miscellany.

_The Cathedral Library at Cologne._--In the year 1794, when the French
Revolutionary army advanced to the Rhine, the valuable library attached to
the Cologne Cathedral was conveyed for safety to Darmstadt. Among its
treasures are one hundred and ninety volumes, chiefly in manuscript. A
careful catalogue of them was made so far back as 1752, by Harzheim, a
learned Jesuit, under the title of "An Historical and Critical Catalogue of
the Manuscripts of the Library of the Metropolitan Church of Cologne." This
valuable collection dates as far back as Charlemagne. It was commenced by
Hildebold, Archbishop of Cologne, and archchancellor of that monarch, in
the year 783. It was considerably increased by gifts from Pope Leo the
Third to the Emperor Charles in 804. The Archbishops Heribertus, Evergerus,
Hanno, and their successors, continued the collection by the purchase of
rare manuscripts and copies of ancient parchments. In the year 1568,
Hiltorp, in the preface of his work "On Divine Offices," dedicated to
Archbishop Salentin, alludes more than once to this rare collection. We
might quote many other authorities to authenticate the manuscripts. Jacob
Pamelius, in a work published at Cologne in 1577, entitled "The Liturgy of
the Latin Church" (who is quoted by Harzheim in his book "The old Codexes
of Cologne"), distinctly gives their date and origin. The collection
consists of eight parts, namely: 1. Bibles; 2. The Fathers; 3.
Ecclesiastical Law; 4. Writers on Sacrifices, Sacraments, Offices of the
Church, and Liturgies; 5. Histories; 6. Ascetics; 7. Scholastics; 8.
Philosophical, Rhetorical, and Grammatical writers. Some of these
manuscripts are richly illuminated, and some set with precious stones. The
first codex dates from the ninth century, if not earlier, which is
indicated by the capital letters, which are in gold. The seventh codex
contains the Gallic, Roman, Hebrew, and Greek Psalmody, as edited by St.
Jerome--"a most rare and valuable codex." The twelfth codex, in elegant
folio, adorned with many illuminations and annotations of the eighth
century, comprises the four Gospels. Codex one hundred and forty-three
deserves particular mention. As frontispiece, there is a portrait of
Archbishop Evergerus in his episcopal robes. It is richly illuminated and
set with jewels. The above quotations, which we have translated from the
Latin, in which language the catalogue is written, will suffice to give
such of our readers as are bibliophiles some idea of a treasures which will
shortly be restored to the shelves of the library attached to the Cologne
Cathedral. We may mention another restoration which is on the eve of
accomplishment. The celebrated collection of pictures, known as the
Dusseldorf collection, will shortly be returned to Prussia, negotiations
having already commenced for that purpose. The collection, which comprises
some of the finest specimens of the German and Dutch schools, is at present
at Munich.--_All the Year Round_.


_On the Movements of the Heart_.--In a recent memoir Dr. Sibson
describes his experiments on the movements of the heart, which were made on
the ass under the influence of wourali, and on dogs subjected to
chloroform. He found that the contraction of the ventricles takes please in
every direction toward a region of rest, which in the right ventricle
corresponds with the anterior papillary muscle in the left ventricle, with
a situation about midway between apex and base. Simultaneously with the
universal contraction of the ventricles there is universal distention of
both auricles, the pulmonary artery, and the aortae. The total amount of
blood contained in the heart and great vessels is the same during both
systole and diastole. During the ventricular contraction, however, the
distribution of the blood, lessened toward the region of the apex, balances
itself by being increased in that of the base, since the auricles and great
vessels are enlarged, not only toward the ventricles, but also outward and
upward. During ventricular dilatation the reverse takes place.

{141}

_The Physics of a Meteorite_.-In a recent note in the proceedings of
the Royal Society, the Rev. Samuel Haughton, of Trinity College, Dublin,
gives a very graphic account of the fall of an aërolite. The fire-ball was
seen by two peasants, who have given the following written statement of
their observations; and since the facts described by these ignorant men
correspond exactly with the facts theoretically believed to present
themselves, we think the description of the highest interest. It is headed,
The Statement of Eye-witnesses, and runs as follows: "I, John Johnson, of
the parish of Clonoulty, near Cashel, Tipperary, was walking across my
potato-garden at the back of my house, in company with Michael Falvy and
William Furlong, on August 12, 1865, at 7 P.M., when I heard a clap, like
the shot out of a cannon, very quick and not like thunder; this was
followed by a buzzing noise, which continued for about a quarter of an
hour, when it came over our heads, and, looking up, we saw an object
falling down in a slanting direction; we were frightened at the speed,
which was so great that we could scarcely notice it; but after it fell we
proceeded to look for it, and found it at a distance of forty yards, half
buried in the ground, where it had struck the top of a potato-drill. We
were some time looking for it (a longer time than that during which we
heard the noise). On taking up the stone we found it warm (milk warm), but
not enough to be inconvenient. The next day it was given up to Lord
Hawarden."--_Popular Science Review_.



_The Earth and Moon in Collision_.--Mr. James Croll, who some time
since asserted that, owing to peculiar solar and lunar action, the above
extraordinary condition will eventually take place, has just published a
paper reasserting the truth of his proposition. The theory was opposed by
the astronomer royal and Professor William Thomson, who showed that, owing
to the position of the tidal wave, the moon is drawn not exactly in the
direction of the earth's centre of gravity, but a little to the east of
that centre, and that in consequence of this she is made to recede from the
earth. Her orbit is enlarged and her angular motion diminished. This
argument does not, in Mr. Croll's opinion, affect his view. The conditions
described by Professor Thomson and the astronomer royal do not in the least
degree prevent the consumption of the _vis viva_ of the earth's motion
round the common centre of gravity, although to a certain extent, at least,
it must prevent this consumption from diminishing the moon's distance, and
increasing her angular motion. But as this consumption of _vis viva_
will go on through indefinite ages, if the present order of things remains
unchanged, the earth and the moon must therefore ultimately come
together.--_Ibid_.

  [Transcribers note: The moon is _receding_ from the earth at about 4
  cm. per year, based on _lunar laser ranging_ (2015).]


_Sanskrit Library_.--Prof. Goldstücker lately communicated to a
scientific meeting at London the intelligence he had received from Lahore
of the existence in that city of a most extensive Sanskrit Library in the
possession of Pandit Radha Kishen. From an examination of the catalogue
that had been sent to him, he was able to state that that library contained
a great many rare and valuable works, some of which had hitherto been
supposed to be lost. He had also been promised catalogues of similar
collections of Sanskrit MS. in other parts or India, of the contents of
which he would keep the Society informed as they came to hand. The paper
read was by Prof. Max Müller, "On the Hymns of the Gaupàyanas, and the
Legend of King Asamâti." After some remarks on the proper use to be made of
Sanskrit MSS., in general, and on the principles of criticism by which the
writer was guided in his edition of Sàyana's Commentary on the Rig-veda, he
proceeded to show by an example the characters of the three classes of MSS.
he had made use of, and the manner in which the growth of legends was
favored by the traditional interpretation of the Vedic Hymns. He had
selected for this purpose the four hymns of the Gaupâyanas (Mandala x.,
57-60), and the Legend of King Asamâti quoted by Sàyana in explanation of
them; and then related the latter, according to the various forms in which
it has been handed down to us, from the simple account given in the Tàndya
Brahmana and Katyàyana's Sarvânukrama, to the more expanded one in the
Satyâyanaka Brahmana, the Brehaddevatà and the Nitiananjarî. He then gives
a double translation of the hymns in question--one in strict conformity to
Sàyana's interpretation, and another in accordance with his own principles
of translation--the latter as a specimen of what he intends to give in his
forthcoming translation of the whole of the Rig-veda.
{142}
The writer concluded with a _resumé_ of the different points of
interest which these hymns, though by no means fair specimens of the best
religious poetry of the Brahmans, present; the healing powers of the hands,
the constant dwelling on divinities which govern the life of man, and the
clear conception of a soul as separate from the body--of a soul after death
going to Yama Vanasvata, the ruler of the departed, or hovering about
heaven or earth ready to be called back to a new life.--_Ibid_

--------

    Original

    New Publications.


  A Conversation on Union Among Christians;
  The Gospels Door of Mercy;
  What Shall I do to Become a Christian?
  The Church and Children;
  A Voice In The Night, Or Lessons of the Sick Room;
  The Gospel Church;
  Who is Jesus Christ?

  Tracts Nos. 13-19;
  Catholic Publication Society,
  145 Nassau St., New-York


The number of Tracts issued and distributed by the Catholic Publication
Society through direct sales and the aid of auxiliary societies is so great
that its noble and zealous project must, by this time, have become a
subject of interest to every Catholic in the country. It is hardly one year
since the first steps were taken to establish it, and already over _half
a million_ Tracts have been distributed through the length and breadth
of the land. This distribution goes on increasing; that made in the month
of February alone amounted to _seventy-five thousand_. Large orders
are constantly coming in for the books and tracts issued by the Society
from the Rt. Rev. Bishops, the Rev. Clergy, and zealous laymen of every
condition of life.

Encouraged by these marks of universal approbation, and accredited with the
high sanction of our late Plenary Council, the Society will enter upon its
work this spring, upon a scale commensurate with the increasing demands
made upon it for its publications and the magnitude of its enterprise. A
Publication House will be obtained, supplied with its own types and presses
and bindery, which will enable it to conduct its operations with greater
rapidity, and furnish its publications at the lowest possible cost. Not a
few have expressed themselves surprised at its present unparalleled
success, and are anxious to know by what means so much has been
accomplished in so short a time.

For the information of the readers of the CATHOLIC WORLD, who, we are sure,
are all deeply interested in the work, it may be stated that a good fund
was contributed by a number of wealthy gentlemen, principally in New York,
that enabled it to begin its work, and which has been increased by the
proceeds of lectures delivered in the diocese of Boston, Albany, and
New-York, the aid of auxiliary societies, and the sales of tracts and
books.

It cannot be denied that within even the last five years, our holy religion
has made great advances in the spiritual care of its own children, in the
multiplication of churches, the foundation of seminaries for the
priesthood, the greater interest shown in the working of Sunday schools and
religious associations of both sexes, as well as in the numerous
conversions that have been made from the different denominations of
Protestants, and in the earnest consideration of the claims of the Catholic
Church manifested by the people of our country, of whom so many have
hitherto been either indifferent to, or ignorant of it.

The Catholic Publication Society being by its very character a ready arm
for the diffusion of Catholic truth, must therefore commend itself to the
warmest sympathies and generous co-operation of every Catholic who rejoices
to see his holy faith spreading abroad and winning a multitude of souls to
a knowledge of Christian truth and the practice of Christian virtues. In
fact, the Society owes its existence to the ardently cherished wish of a
large class for such an organization, which found an almost simultaneous
expression.
{143}
Letters of encouragement and inquiry are being constantly received from the
venerable bishops and clergy, heads of literary and benevolent
associations, superintendents of Sunday-schools, and from different
individuals in the humblest walks of life. The news of the enterprise has
even penetrated to some of the most distant parts of the world; as is shown
by a letter of sympathy containing an offer of inter-communion sent to the
Society by a zealous priest in Bombay, India, who had started a Publication
Society in that far-off city.

It may not be judged out of place to repeat here the article of the
constitution referring to the conditions of membership. It will show any of
our readers who desire to become copartners in this great work, and thereby
secure for themselves the blessing of having aided in the "instruction of
many unto salvation," how they may practically bring that aid to bear upon
the realization of their pious desires.

  "Any person paying, at one time, one hundred dollars into the treasury of
  the Society, may by request, become a 'Patron,' and shall be entitled to
  receive three dollars' worth of the Society's publications annually.

  "Any person paying fifty dollars at one time may become a Life Member,
  and shall be entitled to receive two dollars' worth of the Society's
  publications annually.

  "Any person paying thirty dollars may become a member for five years, and
  shall be entitled to receive one dollar's worth of the Society's
  publications for five years.

  "Persons paying five dollars at one time shall be members for one year,
  and be entitled to receive of the Society's publications to the value of
  half a dollar."

It is plain, however, that while many will be found to associate themselves
as members of the General Society, in order to carry on the work in other
places, auxiliary societies should be formed which receive all the
publications at cost price. It is to the rapid formation of these auxiliary
associations that those many zealous friends of the work should turn their
attention. The same object will also be gained by making it one of the
labors of Societies of St. Vincent de Paul, guilds, confraternities,
sodalities, and the like.

We have seen many communications in which inquiries have been made in
reference to the publication of illustrated tracts and Sunday-school books,
and the establishment of a cheap and attractive Sunday-school paper. The
Society has all these objects in contemplation, and will proceed to their
execution as soon as the Publication House is in operation.

We would suggest, therefore, that each and every one who has this matter at
heart, will make personal efforts to aid the Society in the establishment
of the Publication House, by sending at once their own names as members
with as many more as they can procure, and take measures to found at least
one auxiliary society for home distribution in the community where they
reside.

Our people have shown the greatest interest in the diffusion of Catholic
literature, and are ever ready to make heroic sacrifices, if necessary, for
any work of charity; and in the present aspect of affairs it must be
evident that one of the most urgent calls upon our Christian zeal and love
is that of bringing instruction home to the thousands who need it, and who,
experience has proved, receive it gladly. One little thought we cannot
refrain from expressing, suggested by a remark made in our hearing, that it
will be for us and our children, when time shall show us and them the happy
fruits of this truly Apostolic work, a most consoling reflection that we
were among those who first encouraged and aided it, and bade it "God speed"
as it started upon its high and glorious mission.


  L'echo De La France.
  Revue étrangère de Science et de Littérature.
  Montreal: Louis Ricard, Directeur.

By the Canadian public and the French-speaking portion of our population of
the States, this well-edited eclectic has, we are glad to know, received a
hearty welcome and a liberal support. It purposes to afford its readers a
choice selection of articles culled from the best European magazines and
reviews, chiefly those of France, and it certainly has accomplished its
task hitherto with much ability. It is not to everyone we would care to
confide the duty of choosing our literary repast from the current
literature of the day; and, to anyone at all acquainted with the French
periodicals, it must be evident that it would require a caterer, who is
himself possessed of high intellectual culture, to make from their pages a
judicious and worthy selection of articles suited to the varied tastes of
the American literary public.
{144}
The "Echo de la Franco" is happily conducted by a gentleman upon whose
judgment and taste in this matter we can confidently rely, if we may judge
from the numbers already issued.

We have only to add that it has our best wishes, and we recommend it
especially to the notice of the readers of the CATHOLIC WORLD who are
acquainted with the French language.


  Practical Hints On The Art Of Illumination.
  By Alice Donlevy.
  New-York: A. D. F. Randolph. 1867.

Together with this useful and elegant publication we have received a set of
plates, designed by the same author, to illustrate the poem of Miss
Rossetti, called "Consider."

The work is intended, as we are told in its preface, to instruct those who
wish to study illumination; to assist those who, having commenced, find
many stumbling-blocks in the way, and require aid in the minutiae of the
art; to furnish those who can paint, yet are unable to design with
outlines, to illuminate, etc. This beautiful art is fast becoming with our
young people a favorite recreation, and, with not a few, a remunerative
study. To such as desire to engage in its pursuit, whether for pleasure or
profit, we heartily recommend this volume as one calculated to give them
much desirable information on the subject.


  Three Phases of Christian Love,
  By Lady Herbert. L. Kehoe. 1867.

We have received advanced sheets of this volume, which is to be presented
to the public in a few days. It is not our purpose to speak of it at length
in this place, but reserve it for a more extended and appreciative review
which we hope to give of it in the future pages of the CATHOLIC WORLD.

It is a remarkable book; the purity and beauty of its style fitly according
with the saintly biographies which the distinguished authoress has so
happily chosen to illustrate the three phases of a Christian woman's life
and love. We have given as the life of St. Monica as the mother; of
Victorine de Galard Terraube, a young French lady of rank, as the maiden;
and of the Venerable Mère Devos, superior of the Sisters of Charity, as the
religious. It is a book we would wish to see placed in the hands of every
woman in our country; for, whatever be her position in society, or
whichsoever state of life she may have chosen, she will find in it an
example of high Christian and womanly perfection, the view of which must
claim her homage, and in turn exalt and refine her own character.

Mr. Kehoe, in republishing Bentley's superb English edition, offers us a
volume of equal beauty and finish. As a publication it must claim the
attention of every connoisseur and lover of first-class books.


  Lauretta and the Fables,
  Compiled by the author of Philip Hartley, etc.

  Alice; or, The Rose of the Black Forest.
  By the author of Grace Morton, etc.

  Three Petitions. A tale of Poland and
  Trevor Hall. A Christmas story.

  Conrad and Gertrude: the Little Wanderers.
  Peter F. Cunningham,  Catholic Bookseller, Philadelphia.

These four 16mo volumes form a very acceptable addition to our list of
Catholic tales for children. Their appearance is creditable to the
publisher. We hope those who have ability and leisure will furnish a larger
number of such stories for Sunday-school libraries.


    Books Received.

From Leypoldt & Holt. New-York.

  The Journal of Maurice de Guérin,
  with an essay by Matthew Arnold,
  and a memoir by Sainte-Beuve. Edited by
  G. S. Trebutien. Translated by Edward Thornton
  Fisher. 1 vol. 12mo., pp. 153. Price $1.25.

  Easy German Reading after a New System, by George Storme.
  Revised by Edward A. Open. 1 vol. l2mo, pp.206. Price $1.


From P. F. Cunningham. Philadelphia.

  Conrad and Gertrude;
  The Three Petitions, a Tale of Poland;
  Alice, or the Rose of the Black Forest;
  Lauretta and the Fables.
  4 vols. of the Young Catholics Library,
  pp. 143, 141, 124, 126
  Price 50 cents each.

From D. Appleton, New-York.

  The Merchant of Berlin;
  an Historical Novel L. Mühlbach.
  Translated from the German by Amory Coflin, M.D.
  pp. 394. Price $2.

  Berlin and San Souci; or, Frederick the Great
  and Friends. An Historical
  Romance. By L. Mühlbach. Translated from
  the German by Mrs. Chapman and her daughters.
  pp. 391. Price $2.

From J. J. O'Connor & Co., Newark.

  The exclusion of Protestant Worship from the City of Rome.
  By the Rev. George H, Doane, pastor of St. Patrick's
  Cathedral, Newark, N.J.  Pamphlets. Price 20 cents.

--------

{145}

    The Catholic World.

    Vol. V., No. 26.--May, 1867.


  Original.

  An Old Quarrel.


Those of our readers who have studied with the care their importance
demands the papers on the "Problems of the Age" which have appeared in this
magazine, can not have failed to perceive that the great questions now in
discussion between Catholics and non-Catholics lie, for the most part, in
the field of philosophy, and require for their solution a broader and
profounder philosophy than any which obtains general currency outside of
the church. We think, also, that no one can read and understand them
without finding the elements or fundamental principles of a really Catholic
philosophy, which, while it rests on scientific truth for its basis,
enables us to see the innate correspondence or harmony of reason and faith,
science and revelation, and nature and grace--the principles of a
philosophy, too, that is no modern invention or new-fangled theory which is
brought forward to meet a present emergency, but in substance the very
philosophy that has always been held by the great fathers and doctors of
the church, and professed in Catholic schools and seminaries.

Yet there is one point which the writer necessarily touches upon and
demonstrates as far as necessary to his purpose, which was theological
rather than purely philosophical, that, without interfering in the least
with his argument, already complete, may admit of a more special treatment
and further development. We refer to the objectivity and reality of ideas.
The reader acquainted with the history of philosophy in the middle ages
will perceive at once that the question of the reality of ideas asserted by
the writer takes up the subject-matter of the old quarrel of the
nominalists, conceptualists, and realists, provoked by the Proslogium of
St. Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, in the eleventh century, really one
of the profoundest thinkers, greatest theologians, and ingenious
philosophers of any age.

St. Anselm wished to render an account to himself of his faith, and to know
and understand the reasons for believing in God. He did not doubt the
existence of God; he indeed held that God cannot be thought not to be; he
did not seek to know the arguments which prove that God is, that he might
believe, but that he might the better know and understand what he already
believed.
{146}
Thus he says: "Necque enim quero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut
intelligam. Nam et hoc credo quia nisi credidero, non intelligam." We
believe that we may understand, and we cannot understand unless we
believe--a great truth which modern speculators do not recognize. They
reverse the process, and seek to know that they may believe, and hold that
the first step to knowledge is to doubt or to deny.

In his Monologium, St. Anselm had proved that God is, and determined his
attributes by way of induction from the ideas in the human mind, but it
would seem not wholly to his satisfaction, or, at least, that in writing
that work he discovered, or thought he discovered, a briefer and more
conclusive, method of demonstrating that God is. He had already proved by
psychological analysis, in the way Cousin and others have since done, that
the human mind thinks most perfect being, a greater than which cannot be
thought. This he had done in his Monologium. In his Proslogium he starts
with this idea, that of _ens perfectissimum_, which is, in fact, the
idea of God. "The fool says in his heart there is no God;" not because he
has no idea of God, not because he does not think most perfect being, a
greater than which cannot be thought, but because he does not understand
that, if he thinks it, such being really is. It is greater and more perfect
to be _in re_ than it is to be only _in intellectu_, and
therefore the most perfect being existing only in the mind is not a greater
than which cannot be thought, for I can think most perfect existing _in
re_. Moreover, if most perfect being does not exist _in re_, my
thought is greater and more perfect than reality, and consequently I can
rise above God, and judge him, _quod valde est absurdum_.

Leibnitz somewhere remarks that this argument is conclusive, if we first
prove that most perfect being is possible; but Leibnitz should have
remembered that the argument _ab esse ad posse_ is always valid, and
that God is both his own possibility and reality. Cousin accepts the
argument, and says St. Anselm robbed Descartes of the glory of having
produced it. But it is evident to every philosophical student that the
validity of the argument, if valid it is, depends on the fact that ideas
are objective and real, that is, depends on the identity of the ideal and
the real.

Roscelinus, or Rosceline, did not concede this, and pronounced the argument
of St. Anselm worthless. Confounding, it would seem, ideas with universals,
he denied their reality, and maintained that they are mere words without
anything either in the mind or out of it to respond to them, and thus
founded Nominalism, substantially what is now called materialism. He
rejects the universals and the categories of the peripatetics, and
recognizes only individual existences and words, which words, when not the
names of individual things, are void of meaning. Hence he denied the whole
ideal or intelligible world, and admitted only sensibles. Hobbes and Locke
were nominalists, and so is the author of Mill's Logic. Mr. Herbert Spencer
is a nominalist, but is better described as an atomist of the school of
Leucippus and Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius. We know very little of
Rosceline, except that he lived in the eleventh century, was born in
Brittany, the native land of Abelard and Descartes, and incurred, for some
of his speculations concerning the Trinity, the censures of the church.
None of his writings have come down to us, and we know his doctrine only
from the representations of others.

Guillaume de Champeaux, in the following century, who professed philosophy
for a time at St. Victor, and was subsequently Archbishop of Paris, is the
founder, in the middle ages, of what is called Realism, and which counts
among its disciples Duns Scotus and William of Occam.
{147}
He is said to have maintained the exact opposite of Rosceline's doctrine,
and to have held that ideas, or universals, as they then said, are not
empty words, but entities, existing _a parte rei_. He held, if we may
believe Abelard, that not only genera and species, but such abstractions as
whiteness, soundness, squareness, etc., are real entities. But from a
passage cited from his writings by Abelard, from which Abelard infers he
had changed his doctrine, Cousin, in his Philosophie Scholastique, argues
that this must have been an exaggeration and that Guillaume only held that
such so-called universals as are really genera and species have an
entitative existence. This is most probably the fact; and instead, then, of
being driven to change his doctrine from what it was at first, as Abelard
boasts, it is most likely that he never held any other doctrine. However
this may be, his doctrine, as represented by Abelard, is that which the old
realists are generally supposed to have maintained.

Abelard follows Guillaume de Champeaux, with whom he was for the earlier
part of his career a contemporary. Confounding, as it would seem, ideas
with universals, and universals with abstractions, he denied alike
Rosceline's doctrine that they are mere words, and Guillaume de Champeaux's
doctrine that they are entities or existences _a parte rei_, and
maintained that they are conceptions, really existing _in mente_, but
not _in re_. Hence his philosophy is called Conceptualism. He would
seem to have held that universals are formed by the mind operating on the
concrete objects presented by experience, not, as since maintained by Kant,
that they are necessary forms of the understanding. Thus, _humanitas_,
humanity, is formed by the mind from the concrete man, or _homo_.
There is no humanity _in re_; there are only individual men. In the
word humanity the mind expresses the qualities which it observes to be
common to all men, without paying attention to any particular man. The idea
humanity, then, is simply the abstraction or generalization of these
qualities. Abelard, it would appear from this, makes what we call the race
a property or quality of individuals, which, of course, excludes the idea
of generation. There is, as far as we can see, no essential difference
between the conceptualism of Abelard and the nominalism of Rosceline; for,
by denying the existence _in re_ of genera and species, and making
them only conceptions, it recognizes as really existing only individuals or
particulars.

St. Thomas Aquinas, than whom no higher authority in philosophy can be
named, and from whose conclusions few who understand them will be disposed
to dissent, differs from each of these schools, and maintains that
universals are conceptions existing _in mente cum fundamento in re_,
or conceptions with a basis in reality, which is true of all abstractions;
for the mind can form no conceptions except from objects presented by
experience. I could form no conception of whiteness if I had no experience
of white things, or of roundness if I had seen nothing round. I imagine a
golden mountain, but only on condition that gold and mountain are to me
objects of experience. This is certain, and accords with the peripatetic
maxim, _Nihil est in intellectu, quod prius non fuerit in sensu_,
which Leibnitz would amend by adding, _nisi ipse intellectus_, an
amendment which, perhaps, contains in germ the whole Kantian philosophy.

But St. Thomas, as we shall see further on, does not confound ideal with
universals, nor does he hold genera and species to be simply the
abstraction or generalization of the qualities of individuals or
particulars. Genera and species are real, or there could be no generation.
But the genus or species does not exist apart from its individualization,
or as a separate entity. There are no individuals without the race, and no
race without individuals. Thus the whole race was individualized in Adam,
so that in his sin all men sinned.
{148}
But as genera and species, the only real universals, do not exist apart
from their particulars, and are distinctly possessed or apprehended only as
disengaged from their particulars, which is done only by a mental
operation, St. Thomas might say they exist _in mente cum fundamento in
re_, without asserting them to be real only as properties or qualities
of particulars.

Plato is commonly held to be the father of the ideal philosophy or ideal
realism. We know very little of the philosophy that prevailed before him,
and cannot say how much of the Platonic philosophy is original with him, or
how much of it he took from his predecessors, but he is its originator as
far as our knowledge extends. It is from him that we have the word
_idea_, and his whole philosophy is said to be in his doctrine of
ideas; but what his doctrine of ideas really was is a question. He seems
when treating the question, What is it necessary to know in order to have
real science? to understand by idea _causa essentialis_, or the thing
itself, or what in anything is real, stable, and permanent, in distinction
from the sensible, the phenomenal, the variable, and the transitory. The
real existence of things is their ideas, and ideas are in the Logos or
divine mind. These ideas God impresses on an eternally existing matter, as
the seal upon wax, and so impressed they constitute particulars. Aristotle
accuses Plato of placing the ideas _extra Deum_, and making them
objects of the divine contemplation, but the accusation is not easily
sustained; and we think all that Plato does is to represent the ideas as
_extra Deum_ only as the idea or design of a picture or a temple in
the mind of the artist is distinguishable from the artist himself. But in
God all ideas must be eternal, and therefore really his essence, as is
maintained by St. Thomas. If this is really Plato's doctrine, it is dualism
inasmuch as it asserts the eternity of matter, and pantheism inasmuch as
the ideas, the reality of things, are identical with the divine mind, and
therefore with God himself. On this doctrine, what is that soul the
immortality of which Plato so strenuously maintains? Is it the divine idea,
or the copy of the idea on matter?

When treating the question, How we know? Plato seems to understand by ideas
not the ideas in the divine mind, but their copies impressed on matter, as
the seal on wax. According to him, all knowing is by similitude, and as the
idea leaves its exact image or form on matter, so by studying that image or
copy we arrive at an exact knowledge of the idea or archetype in the divine
mind. This is plain enough; but who are _we_ who study and know? Are
we the archetypal idea, or are we its image or copy impressed on matter?
Here is the difficulty we find in understanding Plato's doctrine of ideas.
According to him all reality is in the idea, and what is not idea is
phenomenal, unsubstantial, variable, and evanescent. The impress or copy on
matter is not the idea itself, and is no more the thing itself than the
reflection I see in a mirror is myself. Plato speaks of the soul as
imprisoned in matter, and ascribes all evil to the intractableness of
matter. Hence he originates or justifies that false asceticism which treats
matter as impure or unclean, and makes the proper discipline of the soul
consist in despising and maltreating the body, and in seeking deliverance
from it, as if our bodies were not destined to rise again, and, reunited to
the soul, to live forever. The real source of Manichaeism is in the
Platonic philosophy. We confess that we are not able to make out from Plato
a complete, coherent, and self-consistent doctrine of ideas. St. Thomas
corrects Plato, and makes ideas the archetypes, exemplars, or models in the
divine mind, and identical with the essence of God, after which God creates
or may create existences. He holds the idea, as idea, to be _causa
exemplaris_, not _causa essentialis_, and thus escapes both
pantheism and dualism, and all tendency to either.

{149}

Aristotle, a much more systematic genius, and, in my judgment, a much
profounder philosopher than Plato, rejects Plato's doctrine of ideas, and
substitutes for them substantial forms, which in his philosophy mean real
existences distinct from God; and which are not merely phenomenal, like
Plato's copies on wax. True, he, as Plato, recognizes an eternal matter,
and makes all existences consist of matter and form. But the matter is
purely passive; and, as nothing, according to his philosophy, exists, save
in so far as active, it is really nothing, exists only _in potentia ad
formam_, and can only mean the ability of God to place existences after
the models eternal in his own mind. His philosophy is, at any rate, more
easily reconciled with Christian theology than is Plato's.

Yet Aristotle and the schoolmen after him adopt Plato's doctrine that we
know by similitude, or by ideas in the sense of images, or representations,
interposed between the mind and the object, or thing existing _a parte
rei_. They suppose these images, or intelligible species, form a sort of
intermediary world, called the _mundus logicus_, distinguished from
the _mundus physicus_, or real world, which they are not, but which
they image or represent to the understanding. Hence the categories or
praedicaments are neither forms of the subject nor forms of the object, but
the forms or laws of logic or this intermediary world. Hence has arisen the
question whether our knowledge has any objective validity, that is, whether
there is any objective reality that responds to the idea. Perhaps it is in
this doctrine, misunderstood, that we are to seek the origin of scepticism,
which always originates in the speculations of philosophers, never in the
plain sense of the people, who never want, when they know, any proof that
they know.

This Platonic and peripatetic doctrine, that ideas are not the reality,
but, as Locke says, that "with which the understanding is immediately
conversant," has been vigorously assailed by the Scottish school, which
denies intermediary ideas, and maintains that we perceive directly and
immediately things themselves. Still the old doctrine obtains to a very
considerable extent, and respectable schools teach that ideas, if not
precisely images, are nevertheless representative, and that the idea is the
first object of mental apprehension. Balmes never treats ideas as the
object existing _in re_, but as its representation to the mind. Hence
the importance attached to the question of certainty, or the objective
validity of our knowledge, around which Balmes says turn all the questions
of philosophy; that is, the great labor of philosophers is to prove that in
knowing we know something, or that to know is to know. This is really the
_pons asinorum_ of modern philosophy as it was of ancient philosophy:
How know I that knowing is knowing, or that in knowing I know? The question
as asked is unanswerable and absurd, for I have only to know with which to
prove that I know, and he who knows knows that he knows. I know that I know
says no more than I know.

The quarrel has arisen from confounding ideas, universals, genera and
species, and abstractions or generalizations, and treating them all as if
pertaining to the same category. These three things are different, and
cannot be scientifically treated as if they were the same; yet nominalists,
realists, and conceptualists recognize no differences among them, nor do
the Platonists. These hold all the essential qualities, properties, or
attributes of things to be ideas, objective and real. Hippias visits
Athens, and proposes during his stay in the city to give the eager
Athenians a discourse, or, as they say nowadays, a lecture, on beautiful
things. Socrates is delighted to hear it, and assures Hippias that he will
be one of his audience; but as he is slow of understanding, and has a
friend who will be sure to question him very closely, he begs Hippias to
answer beforehand a few of the questions this friend is certain to ask.
Hippias consents.
{150}
You propose to discourse on beautiful things, but tell me, if you please,
what are beautiful things? Hippias mentions several things, and finally
answers, a handsome girl. But that is not what my friend wants to know.
Tell me, by what are beautiful things beautiful? Hippias does not quite
understand. Socrates explains. All just things, are they not just by
participation of justice? Agreed. And all wise things by participation of
wisdom? It cannot be denied. And all beautiful things by participation of
beauty? So it seems. Now tell me, dear Hippias, what is beauty, that which
is so not by participation but in itself, and by participation of which all
beautiful things are beautiful? Hippias, of course, is puzzled, and neither
he nor Socrates answers the question.

But we get here a clue to Plato's doctrine, the doctrine of the methexis,
to use his own term. He would seem to teach that whatever particular thing
exists, it does so by the methexis, or participation of the idea. The idea
is that which makes the thing what it is, _causa essentialis_. Thus, a
man is man by participation of the man-idea, or the ideal man, humanity; a
horse is a horse by participation of the horse-idea, or ideal horse; a cow
is a cow by participation of the cow-idea, ideal cow, or _bovisty_;
and so of a sheep, a weazel, an eagle, a heron, a robin, a swallow, a wren,
an oak, a pine, a juniper. To know any particular thing is to know its idea
or ideal, and to know its idea or ideal is to have true science, for it is
science of that in the thing which is real, stable, invariable, and
permanent. This doctrine is very true when by ideas we understand genera
and species, but not, as we have already seen, and as both Rosceline and
Abelard prove, when we take as ideas the abstract qualities of things. Man
is man by participation of humanity; but is a thing white by participation
of whiteness, round by participation of roundness, hard by participation of
hardness, beautiful by participation of beauty, or just by participation of
justice, wise by participation of wisdom? What is whiteness, roundness,
hardness, beauty, justice, or wisdom in the abstract, or abstracted from
their respective concretes? Mere conceptions, as said Abelard, or, rather,
empty words, as said Rosceline. When Plato calls these ideas, and calls
them real, he confounds ideas with genera and species, and asserts what is
manifestly untenable.

Genera and species are not abstractions; they are real, though subsisting
never apart from individuals. Their reality is evinced by the process
called generation, by which every kind generates its like. The race
continues itself, and does not die with the individual. Men die, humanity
survives. It is all very well to say with Plato individuals are mimetic,
and exist as individuals by participation of the idea, if we assume ideas
are genera and species, and created after the models or archetypes in the
divine mind; but it will not do to say so when we identify ideas with the
divine mind, that is, with God himself: We then make genera and species
ideas in God, and since ideas in God are God, we identify them with the
divine essence--a doctrine which the Holy See has recently condemned, and
which would deny all reality distinguishable from God, and make all
existences merely phenomenal, and reduce all the categories, as Cousin
does, to being and phenomenon, which is pure pantheism. The _ideae
exemplares_, or archetypes of genera and species, after which God
creates them, are in the divine mind, but the genera and species, the real
universals, are creatures, and as much so as individuals or particulars
themselves. They are creatures by the direct creation of God, without the
intervention of the plastic soul asserted by Plato, accepted by Cudworth,
and, in his posthumous essay on the Methexis and Mimesis, even by Gioberti.
{151}
God creates all living creatures in genera and species, as the Scripture
plainly hints when it says: "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the
green herb, and such as may seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after
its _kind_, which may have seed in itself upon the earth." Not only in
the vegetable but also in the animal world, each living creature brings
forth its kind--a fact without which generation would be unintelligible,
and which our scientific men who dream of the formation of species by
natural selection, and are laboring hard to prove that man has been
developed from the tadpole or monkey, would do well to remember.

Genera and species are real, and so far, if we call them ideas, ideas or
universals are real, as Plato and the old realists asserted. But when we
understand by ideas or universals the simple abstractions or
generalizations of the essential qualities or attributes of things, as
whiteness, redness, roundness, hardness, beauty, justice, goodness, they
are real only in their concretes or subject. Objects may be really white,
red, hard, heavy; things may be really beautiful; actions may be really
just, wise, and good; but what we call beauty, justice, wisdom, goodness,
can exist only as attributes or qualities of being, and are real only in
their concretes. They can be reflected by creatures, but have no reality as
abstractions. Abstractions, as St. Thomas says, have a foundation in
reality, because they are formed by the mind by way of abstraction from
objects presented by experience, and experience can present only that which
is real; but as abstractions they are nullities, as Rosceline rightly held.

It is necessary, then, to distinguish between genera and species and
abstractions, and it would save much confusion to drop the name of ideas as
applied to them, and even as applied to the intermediary world supposed to
be inserted between the object and subject, as that world is commonly
represented. This intermediary world, we think, has been successfully
assailed by the Scottish school as ordinarily understood; but we do not
think that the scholastics meant by it what is commonly supposed. These
intermediary ideas, or intelligible species, seem to me in St. Thomas to
perform in intellectual apprehension the office performed by light in
external vision, and to be very defensible. They are not the understanding
itself, but they are, if we may be allowed the expression, the light of the
understanding. St. Thomas holds that we know by similitude. But God, he
says, is the similitude of all things, _Deus est similitudo omnium
rerum_. Now say, with him and all great theologians, that God, who is
light itself, is the light of the understanding, the light of reason, the
true light that lighteth every man coming into this world, and the whole
difficulty is solved, and the scholastics and the philosophy so long taught
in our Catholic schools and seminaries are freed at once from the censures
so freely bestowed on them by the Scottish school and others. We suspect
that we shall find seldom any reason to dissent from the scholastic
philosophy as represented by St. Thomas, when once we really understand it,
and adjust it to our own habits of thought and expression.

Supposing this interpretation to be admissible, the Scottish school, after
all, must modify its doctrine that we know things directly and immediately;
for as in external things light is necessary as the medium of vision, why
should not an intelligible light be necessary as the medium of the
intellectual apprehension of intelligibles? Now, as this light has in it
the similitude of the things apprehensible by it, and is for that same
reason light to our understanding, it may, as Plato held, very properly be
expressed by the word _idea_, which means likeness, image, or
representation. The error of Plato would not then be in holding that we
know only _per ideam_ or _per similitudinem_, but in confounding
creator and creature, and recognizing nothing except the idea either to
know or to be known. On this interpretation, the light may be identical
with the object, or it may not be. Being is its own light, and is
intelligible _per se_; objects distinguishable from being are not, and
are intelligible only in the light of being, or a light distinguishable
from themselves.
{152}
As being in its full sense is God, we may say with Malebranche that we see
all things in God, but must add, _and by the light of God_, or _in
Deo et per Deum_.

Assuming ideas as the light by which we see to be the real doctrine of the
scholastics, we can readily understand the relation of ideas to the
peripatetic categories or praedicaments, or forms under which all objects
are and must be apprehended, and thus connect the old quarrel of the
philosophers with their present quarrel. The categories, according to the
Platonists, are ideas; according to the peripatetics, they are the forms of
the _mundus logicus_, which, as we have seen, they distinguish from
the _mundus physicus_. The Scottish school having demolished this
_mundus logicus_, by exploding the doctrine of intermediary ideas
which compose it, if we take that world as formal, and fail to identify it
with the divine light, the question comes up, Are the categories or
self-evident truths which precede all experience, and without which no fact
of experience is possible, really objective, or only subjective? The
question is, if we duly consider it, Is the light by which we see or know
on the side of the subject or on that of the object? Or, in other words,
are things intelligible because we know them, or do we know them because
they are intelligible? Thus stated, the question seems to be no question at
all; but it is made a very serious question, and on the answer to it
depends the validity or invalidity of St. Anselm's argument.

We have already expressed the opinion that the scholastics as represented
by St. Thomas really mean by their phantasms and intelligible species, or
intermediary ideas by which we attain to the knowledge of sensibles and
intelligibles, simply the mediating light furnished by God himself, who is
himself light and the Father of lights. In this case the light is
objective, and by illumining the object renders it intelligible, and at the
same time the subject intelligent. But Reid, who denied intermediary ideas,
seemed to suppose that the light emanates from the subject, and that it is
our powers that render the object intelligible. Hence he calls the
categories first principles of science, constituent principles of belief,
or common sense, and sometimes constituent principles of human nature. He
seems to have supposed that all the light and activity is on the side of
the subject, forgetting that the light shineth in darkness, and the
darkness comprehendeth it not, or that the light shines, and the darkness
does not compress it, or hinder it from shining, without our perceiving it
or the objects it illumines.

Kant, a German, but, on one side, of Scottish descent, adopts the
principles of Reid, but sets them forth with greater precision and more
scientific depth. Denying with Reid the mediating ideas, he makes the
categories, which, according to Aristotle, are forms of the _mundus
logicus_, or intermediary world, forms of the subject or the subjective
laws of thought. He does not say with Rosceline that they are mere words,
with Abelard that they are mere conceptions, nor with St. Thomas that they
are, taken as universals, conceptions, _cum fundamento in re_, but
forms of the reason, understanding, and sensibility, without any objective
validity. They are not derivable from experience, because without them no
experience is possible. Without what he calls synthetic judgments _à
priori_, such as, Every phenomenon that begins to exist must have a
cause, which includes the judgment of cause, of universal cause, and of
necessary cause, we can form no synthetic judgment _à posteriori_.
Hence he concludes that the categories, what some philosophers call first
principles, necessary truths, necessary ideas, without which we do not and
cannot think, are inherent forms of the subject, and are constitutive of
reason and understanding. He thus placed the intelligibleness of things in
the elemental constitution of the subject, whence it follows that the
subject may be its own object, or think without thinking anything distinct
from himself.
{153}
We think God, man, and nature, not because they are, and think them as we
do not because they are really such as we think them, but because such is
our mental constitution, and we are compelled by it to think them as we do.
This the reader must see is hardly disguised scepticism, and Kant never
pretended to the contrary. The only escape from scepticism, he himself
contends, is to fall back from the pure or speculative reason on the
practical reason, or the moral necessities of our nature, and yield to the
moral imperative, which commands us to believe in God, nature, and duty.
Kant has been followed by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, who differ more or
less from one another, but all follow the fundamental principle he
asserted, and end in the doctrine of absolute identity of subject and
object. "_Cogito, ergo sum_," said Descartes: "I think, therefore I
am." "To think," used to say our old friend Bronson Alcott, "is to
_thing_; to thing is to give or produce reality. My thought is
creative: I think, therefore I am; I think God, therefore he is; nature,
and therefore nature exists. I by thinking make them, that is, _thing_
them, render them real." No bad statement, as far as it goes, of the
development Kant's doctrine received from his disciple Fichte. The only
defect is that his later disciples, instead of making thought creative,
have made it identical with the object. St. Anselm says: "I think most
perfect being, therefore most perfect being is;" and so does Descartes,
only Descartes substitutes God for most perfect being; but St. Anselm never
said it in the sense that most perfect being is because I by my thought
make it. Only a modern transcendentalist gone to seed could say that. The
trouble with this whole scheme is that it puts me in the place of God, and
makes me myself God, which I am quite sure I am not. It would be much more
philosophical to say: I exist, therefore I think; I think being because it
is, not that it is because I think it. Things do not exist because I think
them, but I think them because they exist; they are not intelligible
because I think them, but I think them because they are intelligible. Yet
the germ of our friend Alcott's philosophy was in Kant's doctrine, which
places the _forma_ of the thought in the subject instead of the
object.

Whether the categories, as given by Aristotle, are inexact, as Kant
alleges, or whether, as given by Kant himself, they are reducible in number
to two, as M. Cousin pretends, or to one, as Rosmini maintains, enters not
into the present enquiry, which relates not to their number, but their
objective reality. Kant in regard to philosophy has done simply what Reid
did, only he has done it better or more scientifically. He has fully
demonstrated that in every fact of experience there enters a non-empirical
element, and, if he holds with Leibnitz that that element is the human
understanding itself, he has still demonstrated that it is not an
abstraction or generalization of the concrete qualities of the objects
presented by experience.

Take the ideas or categories of the necessary, the perfect, the universal,
the infinite, the perfect, the immutable, the eternal. These ideas, it is
willingly conceded, never exist in the human mind, or are never thought,
without their opposites, the contingent, the finite, the imperfect, the
particular, the variable, the temporal; but they do not, even in our
thought, depend on them, and are not derived or derivable from them by
abstraction or generalization. Take the synthetic judgment instanced by
Kant, Everything that begins to exist must have a cause. The idea of cause
itself, Hume has shown, is not derivable from any fact of experience, and
Reid and Kant say the same. The notion we have of power which founds the
relation of cause and effect, or that what we call the cause actually
produces or places the effect, these philosophers tell us, is not an object
of experience, and is not obtainable from any empirical facts.
{154}
Experience gives only the relation of what we call cause and effect in
time, that is, the relation of antecedence and consequence. Main de Biran
and Victor Cousin, it is true, deny this, and maintain that the idea of
cause is derived from the acts of our own will, which we are conscious of
in ourselves, and which not merely precede their effects, but actually
produce them. I will to raise my arm, and even if my arm be paralytic or
held down by a [force] stronger than I, so that I cannot raise it, I still
by willing produce an effect, the volition to raise it, which is none the
less real because, owing to external circumstances not under my control, it
does not pass beyond my own interior.

But even granting this, how from this particular act of causation conclude
universal cause, or even from universal cause necessary cause? I by willing
produce the volition to raise my arm, therefore everything that begins to
exist must have a cause. The argument from the particular to the universal,
_non volet_, say the logicians, and still less the argument from the
contingent to the necessary.

Take the idea of the perfect. That we have the idea or category in the mind
is indisputable, and it evidently is not derivable by abstraction or
generalization from the facts of experience. We have experience only of
imperfect things, and no generalizing of imperfection can give perfection.
Indeed, without the category of the perfect, the imperfect cannot even be
thought. We think a thing imperfect, that is, judge it to be imperfect--and
every thought is a judgment, and contains an affirmation--because it falls
short of the ideal standard with which the mind compares it. The universal
is not derivable from the particular, for the particular is not conceivable
without the universal. We may say the same of the immutable, the eternal,
the infinite, the one, or unity.

By abstraction or generalization we simply consider in the concrete a
particular property, quality, or attribute by itself, and take it _in
universo_, without regard to anything else in the concrete thing. It
must then be a real property, quality, or attribute of the concrete thing,
or the abstraction will have no foundation in reality. But the universal is
no property, quality, or attribute of particulars, the immutable of
mutables, the eternal of things temporary, the necessary of contingents,
the infinite of finites, or unity of multiples, otherwise particulars would
be universals, mutables immutables, temporals eternals, contingents
necessary, finites infinite, and multiples one--a manifest contradiction in
terms. The generalization or abstraction of particulars is particularity,
of mutables is mutability, of temporals temporality, of contingents
contingency, of finites finiteness, of multiples plurality or multiplicity.
The overlooking of this obvious fact, and regarding the universal,
immutable, eternal, etc., as abstractions or generalizations of
particulars, mutables, temporals, and so on, has given birth to the
pantheistic philosophy, than which nothing can be more sophistical.

The ideas or categories of the universal, the immutable, and the eternal,
the necessary, the infinite, the one or unity, are so far from being
abstractions from particular concretes that in point of fact we cannot even
think things as particular, changeable, temporal, contingent, finite, or
multiple without them. Hence, they are called necessary ideas, because
without them no synthetic judgment _à posteriori_ or fact of
experience is possible. They are not abstractions formed by the human mind
by contemplating concrete things, because the human mind cannot operate or
even exist without them, and without them human intelligence, even if
supposable, could not differ from the intelligence of the brute, which,
though many eminent men in modern science are endeavoring to prove it,
cannot be accepted, because in proving we should disprove it.

{155}

The question now for philosophy to answer, as we have already intimated,
is, Are these ideas or categories, which precede and enter into every fact
of experience, forms of the subject or human understanding, as Kant
alleges, or are they objective and real, and, though necessary to the
existence and operation of the human mind, are yet really distinct from it,
and independent of it, as much so as if no human mind had been created?
This is the problem.

St. Thomas evidently holds them to be objective, for he holds them to be
necessary and self-evident principles, principles _per se nota_, as
may be seen in his answer to the question, _Utrum Deum esse sit per se
notum?_ and we need strong reasons to induce us to dissent from any
philosophical conclusion of the angelic doctor. Moreover, Kant by no means
proves his own conclusion, that they are forms of the subject. All he
proves is that there is and can be no fact of human knowledge without them,
which may be true without their being subjective. He proves, if you will,
that they are constituent principles of the human understanding, in the
sense that the human understanding cannot exist and operate without their
initiative and concurrence; but this no more proves that they are forms of
the subject than the fact that the creature can neither exist nor act
without the creative and concurrent act of the creator proves that the
creator is an inherent law or form of the creature. To our mind, Kant
confirms a conclusion contrary to his own. His masterly _Kritik der
reinen Vernunft_ establishes simply this fact, that man's own subjective
reason alone does not suffice for science, and that man, in science as in
existence, is dependent on that which is not himself; or, in a word, that
man depends on the intelligibleness of the object, or that which renders it
intelligible, to be himself intelligent, or knowing. Man is, no doubt,
created with the power or faculty of intelligence, but that power or
faculty is not the power or faculty to know without an intelligible object,
or to know what is not knowable independently of it. Hence, from Kant's
facts, we conclude that the ideas or categories, without which no object is
intelligible and no fact of intelligence possible, are not subjective, but
objective, real, and independent of the subject.

The matter is simple enough if we look at it freed from the obscurity with
which philosophers have surrounded it. Thought is a complex fact, the joint
product of subject and object. God is his own object, because he is self
existent and self-sufficing: is in himself, as say the theologians,
_actus purissimus_, most pure act, which permits us up to a certain
point to understand the eternal generation of the Son and the procession of
the Holy Ghost. God, being self-existent and self-sufficing, needs and can
receive nothing from without his own most perfect being. But man is a
dependent being, a creature, and does not and cannot suffice in himself for
either his own existence or his own intelligence. He cannot think by
himself alone or without the concurrence of the object, which is not
himself. If the concurrence of the object be essential to the production of
my thought, then that concurrence must be active, for a passive concurrence
is the same as no concurrence at all. Then the object must be active,
therefore real, for what is not real cannot act or be active. Then the
object in my thought is not and cannot be myself, but stands over against
me. Now, I know that I think these ideas, and that they are the object in
my thought without which I cannot think at all. Therefore, they are
objective and real, and neither myself nor my creations, as are
abstractions.

This conclusion is questioned only by those persons who have not duly
considered the fact that there can be no thought without both subject and
object, and that man can never be his own object. To assume that he can
act, think, or know with himself alone, without the concurrence of that
which is not himself and is independent of him, is to deny his dependence
and to assume him to be God--a conclusion which some think follows from the
famous "_Cogito, ergo sum_" of Descartes, and which is accepted and
defended by the whole German pantheistic school of the present day.
{156}
Indeed, as atheism was in the last century, so pantheism is in the present
century the real enemy philosophy has to combat. In concluding the reality
of the object from the fact that I think it, I am far from pretending that
thought cannot err; but the error is not in regard to what I really think,
but in regard to that which I do not think, but infer from my thought. I
think only what is intelligible, and what is intelligible is real, and
therefore true, for falsehood, being unreal, is unintelligible, and
therefore cannot be thought. But in converting my thought into a
proposition, I may include in the proposition not only what I thought, but
what I did not think. Hence the part of error, which is always the part not
of knowledge, but of ignorance. It is so we understand St. Augustine and
St. Thomas.[Footnote 37]

    [Footnote 37: Vide St. Augustine, in lib lxxxiii. Qq., quaest. xxii.,
    and St. Thomas, Summa p.1 quaest. xvii, a. 3 ln. c. The words of St.
    Augustine are, "Omnis qui fallitur, id quo fallitur, non intelligit."
    Hence the Intellect is always true.]

These considerations authorize, or we are much mistaken, the conclusion
that the ideas or categories, which the schoolmen hold to be forms of the
intermediary or logical world, and Kant to be forms of the subject, are
objective and real, and either the intelligible object itself or the
objective light by which it is rendered intelligible or knowable. Plato,
Aristotle, and the scholastics, if we have not misapprehended them, regard
them, in explaining the fact of knowledge, rather as the light which
illumines the object than the object itself. Yet, when the object is
intelligible in itself, or by its own light, St. Thomas clearly identifies
it with the object, and distinguishes it from the object only when the
object is not intelligible _per se_. Thus, he maintains with St.
Augustine that God knows things _per ideam_; but to the objection that
God knows them by his essence, he answers that God in his own essence is
the similitude, that is, the idea, of all things: _Unde idea in Deo nihil
est aliud quam essentia Dei_. Therefore, idea in God is nothing else
than the essence of God. [Footnote 38]

    [Footnote 38: Summa, p.1, quaest, xv. a. 1 ad 3. The question is _de
    Ideis_, and we think the reader, by consulting what St. Thomas says
    in the body of the first article, will agree that, though we have used
    a different phraseology, we have simply given his sense.]

The doctrine of St. Thomas is that all knowledge is by ideas, in the sense
of image, likeness, or similitude. In God the idea, image, likeness, or
similitude, the _species_, is not distinguishable from the divine
essence, for he is in his essence _similitudo omnium rerum_. Now,
though we are created after the _idea exemplaris_, or model eternal in
his essence, and therefore in our degree copy or imitate him, we have not
in us the types or models of all things, are not in ourselves _similitudo
omnium rerum_, and therefore are not intelligent in ourselves alone. The
ideas by which things are intelligible and we intelligent must be distinct
from us, and exist independent of us. As no creature any more than we has
in itself the likeness of all things, or is in itself its own _idea
exemplaris_, no creature can be in itself alone intelligible. Hence what
the schoolmen call idea or intelligible species must be equally distinct
from and independent of the object when the object is _aliquid
creatum_, or creature. Hence, while both the created subject and the
created object depend on the idea, the one to be intelligible, the other to
be intelligent, the idea, intelligible species, the light--as we prefer to
say--is independent of them both. The idea _in re_ is not something
intermediary between subject and object, as is sometimes supposed, but the
light that intervenes between them, as the necessary condition of knowledge
in creatures. This seems to us to be the real doctrine of the scholastics,
as represented by St. Thomas, and is, in our judgment, indisputable.

{157}

We call the idea, regarded as intervening in the fact of knowledge, the
light, and thus avoid the question whether all knowledge is by similitude
or not. It may be that the idea is light because it contains the image or
likeness of the object, but that seems to us a question more curious than
practically important. We cannot see that the explication of the mystery of
knowing is carried any further by calling the idea image or similitude than
by simply calling it the intelligible light. The Platonists and
peripatetics seem to us to come no nearer the secret of knowledge by so
calling it than do our philosophers to the secret of external vision, when
they tell us that we do not see the visible object itself, but its image
painted by the external light on the retina of the eye. How do I see the
image or picture, and connect it with the external object? When I have
called the object or the idea light, I seem to myself to have said all that
can be said on the point, and to retain substantially the scholastic
doctrine of ideas, or intelligible species, which asserts, I add, by the
way, what is perhaps very true, but which after all brings us no nearer to
the secret of knowledge, or the explanation of how in the last analysis we
do or can know at all.

How we do or can know seems to us an inexplicable mystery, as is our
existence itself. That we do know is certain. Every man knows, and in
knowing knows that be knows; but how he knows no man knows. To deny is as
much an act of reason as is to affirm, and no one can deny without knowing
that he denies. Men may doubt many things, but universal doubt is a simple
impossibility, for whoever doubts knows that be doubts, and never doubts
that he doubts or that doubt is doubting. In all things and in all science
we arrive at last, if we think long and deep enough, at a mystery which it
is in no human power to deny or to explain, and which is explicable only in
God by his divine science. Hence it is that philosophy never fully suffices
for itself, and always needs to be supplemented by revelation, as nature to
attain its end must not only be redeemed from the fall, but supplemented by
grace. Man never suffices for himself, since his very being is not in
himself; and how, then, shall philosophy, which is his creation, suffice
for itself? Let philosophy go as far as it can, but let the philosopher
never for a moment imagine that human reason will ever be able to explain
itself. The secret as of all things is in God and with him. Would man be
God, the creature the Creator?

If we have seized the sense of the scholastic philosophy as represented by
St. Thomas, and are right in understanding by the intelligible species of
the schoolmen the light by which the object is intelligible, therefore the
object itself when the object is intelligible _per se_, and the
intelligible light when it is not, the ideal is objective and real, and
both the old quarrel and the new are voided. Abstractions are null; genera
and species are real, but creatures; ideas, as the intelligible light by
which we know, are not forms of the subject, but objective and real, and in
fact the light of the divine being, which, intelligible by itself, is the
intelligibility of all created existences. St. Anselm's argument is, then,
rigidly sound and conclusive: I think most perfect being _in re_; and
therefore such being is, or I could not think it, since what is not cannot
be thought. If the most perfect being, a greater than which and the
contrary of which cannot be thought, be only in my thought, then I am
myself greater than the most perfect being, and my thought becomes the
criterion of perfection, and I am greater than God, and can judge him.

This follows from the fact that the ideal is real. The ideas of the
universal, the infinite, the perfect, the necessary, the immutable, the
eternal cannot be either the intelligible object or the intelligible light,
unless they are being. As abstractions, or as abstracted from being, they
are simple nullities.
{158}
To think them is to think real, universal, infinite, perfect, necessary,
immutable, and eternal being, the _ens perfectissimum_ of St. Anselm,
the _ens necessarium et reale_ of the theologians, a greater than
which or the contrary of which cannot be thought. That this _ens_,
intuitively affirmed to every intellect, is God, is amply shown in the
papers on "The Problems of the Age," and also that _ens_ or being
creates existences, and hence there is no occasion for us to show it over
again.

But it will not do to say, as many do, that we have intuition of God. The
idea is intuitive; and we know by intuition that which is God, and that he
is would be indemonstrable if we did not; but we do not know by intuition
that what is affirmed or presented in intuition is God. When Descartes
says, "I think God, therefore God is," he misapprehends St. Anselm, and
assumes what is not tenable. St. Anselm does not say he thinks God, and
therefore God is; he says, "I think most perfect being, a greater than
which cannot be thought," and therefore most perfect being is. The
intuition is not God, but most perfect being. So the ideal formula, _ens
creat existentias_ so ably defended in the papers on "The Problems of
the Age," would be indefensible, if _Deus _were substituted for
_ens_, and it read, God creates existences. That is true, and
_ens_, no doubt, is _Deus_; but we know not that by intuition,
and it would be wrong to understand St. Augustine, who seems to teach that
we know that God is by intuition, in any other sense than that we have
intuition of that which can be demonstrated to be God. We know by intuition
that which is God, but not that it is God.

St. Thomas seems to us to set this matter right in his answer to the
question, _Utrum Deum esse sit per notum?_--He holds that _ens_
is _per se notum_, or self-evident, and that first principles in
knowing, as well as in being, evidence themselves, but denies that _Deum
esse sit per se notum_, because the meaning of the word _Deus_ or
God is not self-evident and known by all. His own words are: "_Dico ergo
haec propositio, DEUS EST, quantum in se est, per se nota est, quia
praedicatum est idem cum subjecto Deus enim est suum esse, ut infra
patebit. Sed qua nos non scimus de Deo QUID EST, non est per se nota est,
sed indiget demonstrari._" [Footnote 39]

    [Footnote 39: Summa, pars. 1, quaest. 1 a. ln c.]

St. Thomas adds, indeed, "Sed indiget demonstrari, per ea quae sunt magis
nota quoad nos, et minus secundam naturam, scilicet per effectus;" but this
is easily explained. The saint argues that it is not self-evident that God
is, because it is not self-evident what he is; for, according to the
scholastic philosophy, to be able to affirm that a thing is, it is
necessary to know its quidity [Footnote 40], since without knowing what the
thing is we cannot know that it is. What God is can be demonstrated only by
his works, and that it can be so demonstrated St. Paul assures us, Rom.
1:20: "Invisibilia ipsius, a creatura mundi, per ea quae facta sunt,
intellecta, conspiciuntur: sempiterna quoqne virtus et divinitas;" or as we
venture to English it: "The invisible things of God, even his eternal power
and divinity, are clearly seen from the foundation of the world, being
understood (or known) by the things that are made." St. Paul appeals to the
things that are made not to prove that God is, but to show what he is, or
rather, if we may so express ourself, to prove that he is God, and leaves
us, as does St. Thomas, to prove, with St. Augustine, St. Anselm, Fénelon,
and others, that he is, by the argument derived from intuitive ideas, or
first principles, commonly called the _argumentum a priori_, though
that, strictly speaking, it is not, for there is nothing more ultimate or
universal in science than is God himself, or, rather, that which is God.

    [Transcribers footnote 40: quidity--Real nature of a thing; the
    essence.]

{159}

The ideal formula is true, for it is contained in the first verse of
Genesis, "In the beginning God created heaven and earth," and in the first
article of the creed, "I believe in one God, maker of heaven and earth, and
all things visible and invisible;" and what it formulates is, as we have
shown, and as is shown more at length in "The Problems of the Age,"
intuitive, and the human mind could not exists and operate if it were not
so; but the formula itself, or, rather, the formulation as an intellectual
judgment, is not so. The judgment was beyond the reach of all Gentile
philosophy, which nowhere asserts or recognizes the fact of creation; it is
beyond the reach of the mass even of the Christian people, who hold that
God creates the world as an article of faith rather than as a scientific
truth; it is denied by nearly all the systems of philosophy constructed by
non-Catholics even in our own day, and it may well be doubted if science,
unaided by revelation, could ever have attained to it.

This relieves the formula of the principal objections urged against it. The
ideas formulated are the first principles in science with which all
philosophy must commence, but the formulation, instead of being at the
beginning, does not always appear even at its conclusion. The explanations
we have offered show that there is no discrepancy between its assertion and
the philosophy of St. Thomas. Indeed, the formula in substance is the
common doctrine of all great Catholic theologians in all ages of the
church, and may be seen to be so if we will only take the pains to
understand them and ourselves. The objection, that the doctrine that we
have intuition of most perfect being assumes that we have the intuitive
vision of God even in this life, cannot stand, because that vision is
vision of God as he is in himself, and this asserts only intuition of him
as idea, which we even know not by intuition is God. The result of our
discussion is to show that the sounder and better philosophy of our day is
in reality nothing but the philosophy of St. Anselm and St. Thomas, and
which in substance has been always, and still is, taught with more or less
clearness and depth in all our Catholic schools.

------

      Original

      The Hidden Crucifixion.

      "And they crucified him there."


  Say not 'twas on dread Calvary's mountain top,
      And in the broad and glaring light
        Of noonday sun;
    With hooting rabble crowded 'round
        To show
      The Holy One despite.

  No, no! But in this guilty breast, alone--
      God of my love, how could I dare!--
        The deed was done.
      Ye angels, look upon this heart;
        Ye know
      I crucified him there!

------

{160}

    Impressions Of Spain.

    By Lady Herbert.


    St. Sebastian and Burgos.

What is it that we seek for, we Englishmen and Englishwomen, who year by
year, about the month of November, are seen crowding the Folkestone and
Dover steamboats, with that unmistakable "going abroad" look of
travelling--bags and wide-awakes and bundles of wraps and alpaca gowns? I
think it may be comprised in one word--_sunshine_. This dear old land
of ours, with all its luxuries and all its comforts and all its
associations of home and people, still lacks one thing--and that is
climate. For climate means health to one half of us; and health means power
of enjoyment; for, without it, the most perfect of homes (and nowhere is
that word understood so well as in England) is spoiled and saddened. So, in
pursuit of this great boon, a widow lady and her children, with a doctor
and two other friends, started off in the winter of 186-, in spite of
ominous warnings of revolutions, and grim stories of brigands, for that
comparatively unvisited country called Spain. As far as St. Sebastian the
journey was absolutely without interest or adventure of any kind. The
express train dashed them past houses and villages, and picturesque old
towns with fine church towers, from Paris to Bordeaux, and from Bordeaux to
Bayonne, and so on past the awful frontier, the scene of so many
passages-at-arms between officials and ladies' maids, till they found
themselves crossing the picturesque bridge which leads to the little town
of St. Sebastian, with its beach of fine sand, washed by the long billowy
waves of the Atlantic on the one hand, and its riant, well-cultivated
little Basque farms on the other. As to the town itself, time and the
prefect may eventually make it a second Biarritz, as in every direction
lodging-houses are springing up, till it will become what one of Dickens's
heroes would call "the most sea-bathingest place" that ever was! But at
present it is a mass of rough stone and lime and scaffolding; and the one
straight street leading from the hotel to the church of St. Maria, with the
castle above, are almost all that remains of the old town which stood so
many sieges, and was looked upon as the key of Northern Spain. The hotel
appeared but tolerably comfortable to our travellers, fresh from the
luxuries of Paris. When they returned, four or five months later, they
thought it a perfect paradise of comfort and cleanliness. After wandering
through the narrow streets, and walking into one or two uninteresting
churches, it was resolved to climb up to the citadel which commands the
town, and to which the ascent is by the fair zigzag road, like that which
leads to Dover Castle. A small garrison remains in the keep, which is also
a military prison. The officers receiving our party very courteously,
inviting them to walk on the battlements, and climb up to the flag-staff,
and offering them the use of their large telescope for the view, which is
certainly magnificent, especially toward the sea. There is a tiny chapel in
the fortress, in which the Blessed Sacrament is reserved. It was pleasant
to see the sentinel presenting arms to it each time his round brought him
past the ever open door. On the hill side, a few monumental slabs, let in
here and there into the rock, and one or two square tombs, mark the graves
of the Englishmen killed during the siege, and also in the Don Carlos
revolution.
{161}
Of the siege itself, and of the historical interest attached to St.
Sebastian, we will say nothing: are they not written in the book of the
chronicles of Napier and Napoleon?

The following morning, after a fine and crowded service at the church of
St. Maria, where they first saw the beautiful Spanish custom of the women
being all veiled, and in black, two of the party started at seven in the
morning, in a light carriage, for Loyola. The road throughout is beautiful,
reminding one of the Tyrol, with picturesque villages, old Roman bridges,
quaint manor-houses, with coats of arms emblazoned over their porticoes;
rapid, clear trout-streams and fine glimpses of snowy mountains on the
left, and of the bright blue sea on the right. The flowers, too, were
lovely. There was a dwarf blue bugloss of an intensity of color which is
only equalled by the large forget-me-not on the mountainsides of Lebanon.
The peasants are all small proprietors. They were cultivating their fields
in the most primitive way, father, mother, and children working the ground
with a two-pronged fork, called by them a "laya;" but the result was
certainly satisfactory. They speak a language as utterly hopeless for a
foreigner to understand as Welsh or Gaelic. The saying among the
Andalusians is that the devil, who is no fool, spent seven years in Bilboa
studying the Basque dialect, and learned three words only; and of their
pronunciation they add that the Basque write "Solomon," and pronounce it
"Nebuchadnezzar!" Be this as it may, they are a contented, happy,
prosperous, sober race, rarely leaving their own country, to which they are
passionately attached, and deserving, by their independence and
self-reliance, their name of "Bayascogara"--"Somos bastantes."

Passing through the baths Certosa, the mineral springs of which are much
frequented by the Spaniards in summer, our travellers came, after a four
hours' drive, to Azpeitia, a walled town, with a fine church containing the
"pila," or font, in which St. Ignatius was baptized. Here the good-natured
curé, Padre G--, met them, and insisted on escorting them to the great
college of Loyola, which is about a mile from the town. It has a fine
Italian façade, and is built in a fertile valley round the house of St.
Ignatius, the college for missionary priests being on one side, and a
florid, domed, circular marble church on the other. The whole is thoroughly
Roman in its aspect, but not so beautiful as the Gothic buildings of the
south. They first went into the church, which is very rich in jaspers,
marbles, and mosaics, the marbles being brought from the neighboring
mountains. The cloisters at the back are still unfurnished; but the
entrance to the monastery is of fine and good proportions, and the
corridors and staircase are very handsome. Between the church and the
convent is a kind of covered cloister, leading to the "Santuario," the
actual house in which the saint was born and lived. The outside is in
raised brickwork, of curious old geometrical patterns; and across the door
is the identical wooden bar which in old times served as protection to the
château. Entering the low door, you see on your right a staircase; and on
your left a long low room on the ground floor, in which is a picture of the
Blessed Virgin. Here the saint was born: his mother, having a particular
devotion to the Virgin, insisted on being brought down here to be confined.
Going up the stairs, to a kind of corridor used as a confessional, you come
first to the chapel of St. Francis Borgia, where he said his first mass.
Next to it is one dedicated to Marianne di Jesu, the "Lily of Quito," with
a beautiful picture of the South American saint over the high altar. To the
left, again, is another chapel, and here St. François Xavier, the Apostle
of the Indies, said his mass before starting on his glorious evangelical
mission.
{162}
Ascending a few steps higher, their guide led them into a long low room,
richly decorated and gilt, and full of pictures of the different events of
the life of the saint. A gilt screen divided the ante-chapel from the
altar, raised on the very spot where he lay so long with his wounded leg,
and where he was inspired by the Blessed Virgin to renounce the world, and
devote himself, body and soul, to the work of God. There is a
representation of him in white marble under the altar as he lay; and
opposite, a portrait, in his soldier's dress, said to be taken from life,
and another of him afterward, when he had become a priest. It is a
beautiful face, with strong purpose and high resolve in every line of the
features.

In the sacristy is the "baldachino," or tester of his bed, in red silk. It
was in this room that he first fell sick and took to reading the Lives of
the Saints to amuse himself, there being no other book within reach. Such
are the "common ways," which we blindly call "accidents," in which God
leads those whom he chooses, like Saul, for his special service. The
convent contains thirty fathers and twenty-five lay brothers. There are
about 120 students, a fine library, refectory, etc. They have a large
day-school of poor children, whom they instruct in Basque and Spanish; and
distribute daily a certain number of dinners, soup, and bread, to the sick
poor of the neighboring villages, about twenty of whom were waiting at the
buttery door for their daily supply.

The English strangers, taking leave of the kind and courteous fathers, had
luncheon at a little "posada" close by, where the hostess insisted on their
drinking some of the cider of the country, which the doctor, himself a
Devonshire man, was obliged to confess excelled that of his own country.
The good curé entertained them meanwhile with stories of his people, who
appear to be very like the Highlanders, both in their merits and their
faults. Some of their customs seemed to be derived from pagan times, such
as that of offering bread and wine on the tombs of those they love on the
anniversary of their death; a custom in vogue in the early days of
Christianity, and mentioned by St. Augustine in his Confessions as being
first put a stop to by St. Ambrose, at Milan, on account of the abuses
which had crept into the practice. The drive back was, if possible, even
more beautiful than that of the morning, and they reached St. Sebastian at
eight o'clock, delighted with their expedition.

The next day they started for Burgos, by rail, only stopping for a few
minutes on their way to the station to see the "Albergo dei Poveri," a
hospital and home for incurables, nursed by the Spanish sisters of charity.
They are affiliated to the sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, and follow their
rule, but do not wear the "white cornette" of the French sisters.

The railroad in this part of Spain has been carried through most
magnificent scenery, which appeared to our travellers like a mixture of
Poussin and Salvator Rosa. Fine purple mountains, still sprinkled with
snow, with rugged and jagged peaks standing out against the clear blue sky,
and with waterfalls and beautiful streams rushing down their sides; an
underwood of chestnut and beach trees; deep valleys, with little brown
villages and bright white convents perched on rising knolls, and
picturesque bridges spanning the little streams as they dashed through the
gorges; and then long tracks of bright rose-colored heather, out of which
rose big boulder-stones or the wayside cross; the whole forming, as it
were, a succession of beautiful pictures such as would delight the heart of
a painter, both as to composition and coloring. No one can say much for the
pace at which the Spanish railways travel; yet are they all too quick in
scenery such as this, when one longs to stop and sketch
at every turn.
{163}
Suddenly, however, the train came to a stand-still: an enormous fragment of
rock had fallen across the line in the night, burying a luggage-train, but
fortunately without injury to its drivers; and our party had no alternative
but to get out, with their manifold bags and packages, and walk across the
_débris_ to another train, which, fortunately, was waiting for them on
the opposite side of the chasm. A little experience of Spanish travelling
taught them to expect such incidents half a dozen times in the course of
the day's journey; but at first it seemed startling and strange. They
reached Burgos at six, and found themselves in a small but very decent
"fonda," where the daughter of the landlord spoke a little French, to their
great relief. They had had visions of Italian serving nearly as well as
Spanish for making themselves understood by the people; but this idea was
rudely dispelled the very first day of their arrival in Spain. Great as the
similarity may be in reading, the accent of the Spaniard makes him utterly
incomprehensible to the bewildered Italian scholar; and the very likeness
of some words increases the difficulty when he finds that, according to the
pronunciation, a totally different meaning is attached to them. For
instance, one of the English ladies, thinking to please the mistress of the
house, made a little speech to her about the beauty and cleanliness of her
kitchen, using the right word (_cocina_), but pronouncing it with the
Italian accent. She saw directly she had committed a blunder, though
Spanish civility suppressed the laugh at her expense. She found afterward
that the word she had used, with the "ci" _soft_, meant a female pig.
And this was only a specimen of mistakes hourly committed by all who
adventured themselves in this unknown tongue.

A letter of introduction procured for our travellers an instant admission
to the cardinal archbishop, who received them most kindly, and volunteered
to be their escort over the cathedral. He had been educated at Ushaw, and
spoke English fluently and well. He had a very pretty little chapel in his
palace, with a picture in it of Sta. Maria della Pace at Rome, from whence
he derives his cardinal's title.

The cathedral at Burgos, with the exception of Toledo, is the most
beautiful Gothic building in Spain. It was begun by Bishop Maurice, an
Englishman, and a great friend of St. Ferdinand's, in the year 1220. The
spires, with their lacework carving; the doorways, so rich in sculpture;
the rose-windows, with their exquisite tracery; the beautiful
lantern-shaped clerestory; the curious double staircase of Diego de Siloe;
the wonderful "retablos" behind the altars, of the finest wood-carving; the
magnificent marble and alabaster monuments in the side chapels, vying with
one another in beauty and richness of detail; the wonderful wood-carving of
the stalls in the choir; the bas reliefs carved in every portion of the
stone; in fact, every detail of this glorious building is equally perfect;
and even in Southern Spain, that paradise for lovers of cathedrals, can
scarcely be surpassed. The finest of the monuments are those of the Velasco
family, the hereditary high-constable of Castile. They are of Carrara
marble, resting upon blocks of jasper: at the feet of the lady lies a
little dog, as the emblem of "Fidelity." Over the doorway of this chapel,
leading to a tiny sacristy, are carved the arms of Jerusalem. In the large
sacristy is a Magdalen, by Leonardo da Vinci; and some exquisite church
plate, in gold and enamel, especially a chalice, a processional cross, a
pax, etc. In the first chapel on the right, as you enter by the west door,
is a very curious figure of Christ, brought from the Holy Land, with real
hair and skin; but painful in the extreme, and almost grotesque from the
manner in which it has been dressed. This remark, however, applies to
almost all the images of Christ and of the Blessed Virgin throughout Spain,
which are rendered both sad and ludicrous to English eyes from the
petticoats and finery with which modern devotion has disfigured them.
{164}
This crucifix, however, is greatly venerated by the people, who call it
"The Christ of Burgos," and on Sundays or holidays there is no possibility
of getting near it, on account of the crowd. In the Chapel of the
Visitation are three more beautiful monuments, and a very fine picture of
the Virgin and Child, by Sebastian del Piombo. But it was impossible to
take in every portion of this cathedral at once; and so our travellers went
on to the cloisters, passing through a beautiful pointed doorway, richly
carved, which leads to the chapter-house, now a receptacle for lumber, but
containing the chest of the Cid, regarding which the old chronicle says:
"He filled it with sand, and then, telling the Jews it contained gold,
raised money on security." In justice to the hero, however, we are bound to
add, that when the necessities of the war were over, he repaid both
principal and interest. Leaving, at last, the cloisters and cathedral, and
taking leave of the kind archbishop, our party drove to the Town Hall,
where, in a walnut-wood urn, are kept the bones of the Cid, which were
removed twenty years ago from their original resting-place at Cardena. The
sight of them strengthened their resolve to make a pilgrimage to his real
tomb, which is in a Benedictine convent about eight miles from the town.
Starting, therefore, in two primitive little carriages, guiltless of
springs, they crossed the river and wound up a steep hill till they came in
sight of _Miraflores_, the great Carthusian convent, which, seen from
a distance, strongly resembles Eton College Chapel. It was built by John
II. for a royal burial-place, and was finished by Isabella of Castile.
Arriving at the monastery, from whence the monks have been expelled, and
which is now tenanted by only one or two lay brothers of the order, they
passed through a long cloister, shaded by fine cypresses, into the church,
in the chancel of which is that which may really be called one of the seven
wonders of the world. This is the alabaster sepulcher of John II. and his
wife, the father and mother of Queen Isabella, with their son, the Infante
Alonso, who died young. In richness of detail, delicacy of carving, and
beauty of execution, the work of these monuments is perfectly
unrivalled--the very material seems to be changed into Mechlin lace. The
artist was Maestro Gil, the father of the famous Diego de Siloe, who carved
the staircase in the cathedral. He finished it in 1493; and one does not
wonder at Philip II.'s exclamation when he saw it: "_We_ have done
nothing at the Escurial." In the sacristy is a wonderful statue of St.
Bruno, carved in wood, and so beautiful and life-like in expression that it
was difficult to look at anything else.

Leaving Miraflores, our travellers broke tenderly to their coachmen their
wish to go on to Cardena. One of them utterly refused, saying the road was
impassable; the other, _moyennant_ an extra gratuity, undertook to try
it, but stipulated that the gentlemen should walk, and the ladies do the
same, if necessary. Winding round the convent garden walls, and then across
a bleak wild moor, they started, and soon found themselves involved in a
succession of ruts and sloughs of despond which more than justified the
hesitation of their driver. On the coach-box was an imp of a boy, whose
delights consisted in quickening the fears of the most timid among the
ladies by invariably making the horses gallop at the most difficult and
precipitous parts of the road, and then turning round and grinning at the
fright he had given them. It is needless to say that the carriage was not
his property. At last, the horses came to a stand-still; they could go no
further, and the rest of the way had to be done on foot. But our travellers
were not to be pitied; for the day was lovely, and the path across the moor
was studded with flowers. At last, on climbing over a steep hill which had
intercepted their view, they came on a lovely panorama, with a background
of blue mountains tipped with snow; a wooded glen, in which the brown
convent nestled, and a wild moor foreground, across which long strings of
mules with gay trappings, driven by peasants in Spanish costumes, exactly
as represented in Ansdell's paintings, were wending their way toward the
city.
{165}
Tired as some of our party were, this glorious view seemed to give them
fresh strength, and they rapidly descended the hill by the hollow path
leading to the convent. Over the great entrance is a statue of the Cid,
mounted on his favorite horse, "Babicca," who bore him to his last
resting-place, and was afterward buried beside the master he loved so well.
But the grand old building seemed utterly deserted, and a big mastiff,
fastened by an ominously slight chain to the doorway, appeared determined
to defy their attempts to enter. At last, one of them, more courageous than
the rest, tempting the Cerberus with the remains of her luncheon, got past
him, and wandered through the cloister, up a fine staircase to a spacious
corridor, in hopes of finding a guide to show them the way to the chapel,
where lay the object of their expedition, that is, the monument of the Cid.
But she was only answered by the echo of her own footsteps. The cells were
empty; the once beautiful library gutted and destroyed; the refectory had
nothing in it but bare walls--the whole place was like a city of the dead.
At last, she discovered a staircase lending down to a cloister on the side
opposite the great entrance, and there a low-arched door, which she found
ajar, admitted her into the deserted church. The tomb of the Cid has been
removed from the high altar to a side Chapel; and there is interred
likewise, his faithful and devoted wife Ximena, and their two daughters. On
his shield is emblazoned the "tizona," or sparkling brand, which the
legends affirm he always carried in his hand, and with which he struck
terror into the hearts of the infidels. This church and convent, built for
the Benedictines by the Princess Sancho, in memory of her son Theodoric,
who was killed out hunting, was sacked by the Moors in the ninth century,
when 200 of the monks were murdered. A tablet in the south transept still
remains, recording the massacre; but the monument of Theodoric has been
mutilated and destroyed. The Christian spoilers have done their work more
effectually than the Moslem! Sorrowfully our travellers left this beautiful
spot, thinking bitterly on the so-called age of progress which had left the
abode of so much learning and piety to the owls and the bats; and partly
walking, partly driving, returned without accident to the city. One more
memento of the Cid at Burgos deserves mention. It is the lock on which he
compelled the king, Alonso VI., to swear that he had had no part in his
brother Sancho's assassination at Zamora. All who wished to confirm their
word with a solemn oath used to touch it, till the practice was abolished
by Isabella, and the lock itself hung up in the old church of St. Gadea, on
the way to the castle hill, where it still rests. This is the origin of the
peasant custom of closing the hand and raising the thumb, which they kiss
in token of asseveration; and in like manner we have the old Highland
saying: "There's my thumb. I'll not betray you."

Another charming expedition was made on the following day to Las Huelgas,
the famous Cistercian nunnery, built in some gardens outside the town by
Alonso VIII. and his wife Leonora, daughter of our King Henry II.

When one of the ladies had asked the cardinal for a note of introduction to
the abbess, be had replied laughing: "I am afraid it would not be of much
use to you. She certainly is not under my jurisdiction, and I am not sure
whether she does not think I am under hers!" No lady abbess certainly ever
had more extraordinary privileges. She is a Princess Palatine--styled "By
the grace of God"--and has feudal power over all the lands and villages
round. She appoints her own priests and confessors, and has a hospital
about a mile from the convent, nursed by the sisters, and entirely under
her control.
{166}
After some little delay at the porter's lodge, owing to their having come
at the inconvenient hour of dinner, our party were ushered into the parlor,
and there, behind a grille, saw a beautiful old lady, dressed in wimple and
coif, exactly like a picture in the time of Chaucer. This was the
redoubtable lady abbess. There are twenty-seven choir nuns and twenty-five
lay sisters in the convent, and they follow the rule of St. Bernard. The
abbess first showed them the Moorish standard, beautifully embroidered,
taken at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, in 1180. A curious old fresco
representing this battle remains over the arch of the church. She then took
them to the choir, which is very rich in carving, and contains the tombs of
the founders, Alonso and Leonora, and also of a number of infantas, whose
royal bodies are placed in richly carved Gothic sepulchres, resting on
lions, on each side of the choir. In the church is a curious hammered iron
gilt pulpit, in which St. Vincent de Ferrer preached. Here St. Ferdinand
and Alonso XI. knighted themselves, and here our own king, Edward I.,
received the honor of knighthood at the hands of Alonso el Sabio.

The church is a curious jumble of different dates of architecture; but
there is a beautiful tower and doorway, some very interesting old
monuments, and a fine double rose-window. The cloisters are very beautiful,
with round-beaded arches, grouped pillars, and Norman capitals. The lady
abbess then ordered one of the priests of the convent to take her English
visitors to see their hospital, called "Del Rey," the walk to which from
the convent is through pleasant fields like English meadows. It is
admirably managed and nursed by the nuns. Each patient has a bed in a
recess, which makes, as it were, a little private room for each, and this
is lined with "azulejos," or colored tiles, up to a certain height, giving
that clean bright look which distinguishes the Spanish hospitals from all
others. At the end of each ward was a little altar, where mass is daily
performed for the sick. There are fifty men and fifty women, and the
surgical department was carefully supplied with all the best and newest
instruments, which the surgeon was eager to show off to the doctor, the
only one of the party worthy of the privilege. The wards opened into a
"patio," or court, with seats and bright flowers, where the patients who
could leave their beds were sitting out and sunning themselves. Altogether,
it is a noble institution; and one must hope that the ruthless hand of
government will not destroy it in common with the other charitable
foundations of Spain.


  Madrid.

But the cold winds blew sharply, and our travellers resolved to hurry
south, and reserve the further treasures of Burgos for inspection on their
return. The night train conveyed them safely to Madrid, where they found a
most comfortable hotel in the "Ville de Paris," lately opened by an
enterprising Frenchman, in the "Puelta del Sol;" and received the kindest
of welcomes from the English minister, the Count T. D., and other old
friends. It was Sunday morning, and the first object was to find a church
near at hand. These are not wanting in Madrid, but all are modern, and few
in good taste: the nicest and best served is undoubtedly that of "St. Louis
des Français," though the approach to it through the crowded market is
rather disagreeable early in the morning. The witty writer of "Les Lettres
d'Espagne" says truly: "Madrid _ne me dit rien:_ c'est moderne,
aligné, propre et civilisé." As for the climate, it is detestable: bitterly
cold in winter, the east wind searching out every rheumatic joint in one's
frame, and pitilessly driving round the corners of every street; burning
hot in summer, with a glare and dust which nearly equal that of Cairo in a
simoom.

{167}

The Gallery, however, compensates for all. Our travellers had spent months
at Florence, at Rome, at Dresden, and fancied that nothing could come up to
the Pitti, the Uffizi, or the Vatican--that no picture could equal the "San
Sisto;" but they found they had yet much to learn. No one who has not been
in Spain can so much as imagine what Murillo is. In England he is looked
upon as the clever painter of picturesque brown beggar-boys: there is not
one of these subjects to be found in Spain, from St. Sebastian to
Gibraltar! At Madrid, at Cadiz, but especially at Seville, one learns to
know him as he is--that is, the great mystical religious painter of the
seventeenth century, embodying in his wonderful conceptions all that is
most sublime and ecstatic in devotion, and in the representation of divine
love. The English minister, speaking of this one day to a lady of the
party, explained it very simply, by saying that the English generally only
carried off those of his works in which the Catholic feeling was not so
strongly displayed. It would be hopeless to attempt to describe all his
pictures in the Madrid Gallery. The Saviour and St. John, as boys, drinking
out of a shell, is perhaps the most delicate and exquisite in coloring and
expression; but the "Conception" surpasses all. No one should compare it
with the Louvre pictures of the same subject. There is a refinement, a
tenderness, and a beauty in the Madrid "Conception" entirely wanting in the
one stolen by the French. Then there is Velasquez, with his inimitable
portraits; full of droll originality, as the "AEsop;" or of deep historical
interest, as his "Philip IV.;" or of sublime piety, as in his
"Crucifixion," with the hair falling over one side of the Saviour's face,
which the pierced and fastened hands cannot push aside: each and all are
priceless treasures, and there must be sixty or seventy in that one long
room. Ford says that "Velasquez is the Homer of the Spanish school, of
which Murillo is the Virgil." Then there are Riberas, and Zurbarans, Divino
Morales, Juan Joanes, Alonso Caño, and half-a-dozen other artists, whose
very names are scarcely known out of Spain, and all of whose works are
impregnated with that mystic, devotional self-sacrificing spirit which is
the essence of Catholicism. The Italian school is equally magnificently
represented. There are exquisite Raphaels, one especially, "La Perla," once
belonging to our Charles I., and sold by the Puritans to the Spanish king;
the "Spasimo," the "Vergin del Pesce," etc.; beautiful Titians, not only
portraits, but one, a "Magdalen," which is unknown to us by engravings or
photographs in England, where, in a green robe, she is flying from the
assaults of the devil, represented by a monstrous dragon, and in which the
drawing is as wonderful as the coloring; beautiful G. Bellinis, and Luinis,
and Andrea del Sartos (especially one of his wife), and Paul Veronese, and
others of the Venetian and Milanese schools. In a lower room there are
Dutch and Flemish chefs-d'oeuvre without end: Rubens, and Vandyke, and
Teniers, and Breughel, and Holbein, and the rest. It is a gallery
bewildering from the number of its pictures, but with the rare merit of
almost all being good; and they are so arranged that the visitor can see
them with perfect comfort at any hour of the day. In the ante-room to the
long gallery are some pictures of the present century, but none are worth
looking at save Goya's pictures of the wholesale massacre of the Spanish
prisoners by the French, which are not likely to soften the public feeling
of bitterness and hostility toward that nation.

There is nothing very good in sculpture, only two of the antiques being
worth looking at; but there is a fine statue of Charles V., and a
wonderfully beautiful St. John of God, carrying a sick man out of the
burning hospital on his back, which is modern, but in admirable taste.
{168}
Neglected, in some side cupboards, and several of them broken and covered
with dust and dirt, are some exquisite tazzas of Benvenuto Cellini,
D'Arphes, and Beceriles, in lapis, jade, agate, and enamel, finer than any
to be seen even in the Grüne Gewölbe of Dresden. There is a gold mermaid,
studded with rubies, and with an emerald tail, and a cup with an enamelled
jewelled border and stand, which are perfectly unrivalled in beauty of
workmanship. Then, in addition to this matchless gallery, Madrid has its
"Academia," containing three of Murillo's most magnificent conceptions. One
is "St. Elizabeth of Hungary," washing the wounds of the sick, her fair
young face and delicate white hands forming a beautiful contrast with the
shrivelled brown old woman in the foreground. The expression of the saint's
countenance is that of one absorbed in her work and yet looking beyond it.
[Footnote 41] The other is the "Dream," in which the Blessed Virgin appears
to the founder of the church of St. Maria della Neve (afterward called St.
Maria Maggiore) and his wife, and suggests to them the building of a church
on a spot at Rome, which would be indicated to them by a fall of snow,
though it was then in the month of August. In the third picture the founder
and his wife are kneeling at the feet of the Pope, telling him of their
vision, and imploring his benediction on their work. These two famous
pictures were taken by Soult from Seville, and are of a lunette shape,
being made to fit the original niche for which they were painted: both are
unequalled for beauty of color and design, and have recently been
magnificently engraved, by order of the government.

    [Footnote 41: This picture was stolen from the Carldad, at Seville, by
    the French, and afterward sent back to Madrid, where it still remains.]

But apart from its galleries, Madrid is a disappointment; there is no
antiquity or interest attached to any of its churches or public buildings.
The daily afternoon diversion is the drive on the Prado; amusing from the
crowd, perhaps, but where, with the exception of the nurses, all national
costume has disappeared. There are scarcely any mantillas; but Faubourg
St.-Germain bonnets, in badly assorted colors, and horrible and exaggerated
crinolines, replacing the soft, black, flowing dresses of the south. It is,
in fact, a bad _réchauffé_ of the Bois de Boulogne. The queen, in a
carriage drawn by six or eight mules, surrounded by her escort, and
announced by trumpeters, and the infantas, following in similar carriages,
form the only "event" of the afternoon. Poor lady! how heartily sick she
must be of this promenade! She is far more pleasing-looking than her
pictures give her credit for, and has a frank kind manner which is an
indication of her good and simple nature. Her children are most carefully
brought up, and very well educated by the charming English authoress,
Madame Calderon de la Barca, well known by her interesting work on Mexico.
On Saturdays, the queen and the royal family always drive to Atocha, a
church at the extreme end of the Prado, in vile taste, but containing the
famous image of the Virgin, the patroness of Spain, to whom all the
royalties are specially devoted. It is a black image, but almost invisible
from the gorgeous jewels and dresses with which it is adorned.

One of the shows of Madrid is the royal stables, which are well worth a
visit. There are upward of two hundred and fifty horses, and two hundred
fine mules; the backs of the latter are invariably shaved down to a certain
point, which gives them an uncomfortable appearance to English eyes, but is
the custom throughout Spain. One lady writer asserts that "it is more
modest!" There is a charming little stud belonging to the prince imperial,
which includes two tiny mules not bigger than dogs, but in perfect
proportions, about the size required to drag a perambulator. Some of the
horses are English and thoroughbred, but a good many are of the
heavy-crested Velasquez type. The carriages are of every date, and very
curious. Among them is one in which Philip I. (le Bel) was said to have
been poisoned, and in which his wife, Jeanne la Folle, still insisted on
dragging him out, believing he was only asleep.

{169}

More interesting to some of our party than horses and stables were the
charitable institutions in Madrid, which are admirable and very numerous.
It was on the 12th of November, 1856, that the Mère Dévos, afterward Mère
Générale of the order of St. Vincent de Paul, started with four or five of
her sisters of charity to establish their first house in Madrid. They had
many hardships and difficulties to encounter, but loving perseverance
conquered them all. The sisters now number between forty and fifty,
distributed in three houses in different parts of the city, with more than
one thousand children in their schools and orphanages, the whole being
under the superintendence of the Soeur Gottofrey, the able and charming
French "provincial" of Spain. The queen takes a lively interest in their
success, and most of the ladies of her court are more or less affiliated to
them. There are branch houses of these French sisters at Malaga, Granada,
Barcelona, and other towns; and they are now beginning to undertake
district visiting, as well as the care of the sick and the education of
children--a proceeding which they were obliged to adopt with caution, owing
to the strong prejudice felt in Spain toward any religious order's being
seen outside their "clausura," and also toward their dress, the white
cornette, which, to eyes unaccustomed to anything but black veils, appeared
outrageous and unsuitable. The Spanish sisters of charity, though
affiliated to them, following the rule of St. Vincent, and acknowledging N.
T. H. Père Étienne as their superior, still refuse to wear the cornette,
and substitute a simple white cap and black veil. These Spanish sisters
have the charge of the magnificent Foundling Hospital, which receives
upward or one thousand children; of the hospital called Las Recogidas, for
penitence; of the General Hospital, where the sick are admirably cared for
and to which is attached a wing for patients of an upper class, who pay a
small sum weekly, and have all the advantages of the clever surgery and
careful nursing of the hospital (an arrangement sadly needed in our English
hospitals); of the Hospicio de St. Maria del Cármen, founded by private
charity, for the old and incurables; of the infant school, or "salle
d'asile," where the children are fed as well as taught; and of the Albergo
dei Poveri, equivalent to what we should call a workhouse in England, but
which we cannot desecrate by such a name when speaking of an establishment
conducted on the highest and noblest rules of Christian charity, and where
the orphans find not only loving care and tender watchfulness, but
admirable industrial training, fitting them to fill worthily any
employments to which their natural inclination may lead them. The Sacré
Coeur have a large establishment for the education of the upper classes at
Chaumartin de la Rosa, a suburb of Madrid, about four miles from the town.
It was founded by the Marquesa de Villa Nueva, a most saint-like person,
whose house adjoins, and in fact forms part of the convent--her bedroom
leading into a tribune overlooking the chapel and the blessed sacrament.
The view from the large garden, with the mountains on the one hand, and the
stone pine woods on the other, is very pretty, and unlike anything else in
the neighborhood of Madrid. The superior, a charming person, showed the
ladies all over the house, which is large, commodious, and airy, and in
which they have already upward of eighty pupils. They have a very pretty
chapel, and in the parlor a very beautiful picture of St. Elizabeth, by a
modern artist.

One more "lion" was visited before leaving Madrid, and that was the armory,
which is indeed well worth a long and careful examination. The objects it
contains are all of deep historical interest.
{170}
There is a collar-piece belonging to Philip II., with scenes from the
battle of St. Quentin exquisitely carved; a helmet taken from the
unfortunate Boabdil, the last Moorish king of Granada; beautiful Moorish
arms and Turkish banners taken at the battle of Lepanto, in old Damascus
inlaid-work; the swords of Boabdil, and of Ferdinand and Isabella; the
armor of the Cid, of Christopher Columbus, of Charles V., of St. Ferdinand,
and of Philip II.; the carriage of Charles V., looking like a large
bassinet; exquisite shields, rapiers, swords, and helmets; some very
curious gold ornaments, votive crowns, and crosses of the seventh century;
and heaps of other treasures too numerous to be here detailed. But our
travellers were fairly exhausted by their previous sight-seeing, and gladly
reserved their examination of the rest to a future day. At all times, a
return to a place is more interesting than a first visit; for in the latter
one is oppressed by the feeling of the quantity to be seen and the short
time there is to see it in, and so the intense anxiety and fatigue destroy
half one's enjoyment of the objects themselves. That evening they were to
leave the biting east winds of Madrid for the more genial climate of sunny
Malaga; and so, having made sundry very necessary purchases, including
mantillas and chocolate, and having eaten what turned out to be their last
good dinner for a very long time, they started off by an eight o'clock
train for Cordova, which was to be their halting place midway. On reaching
Alcazar, about one o'clock in the morning, they had to change trains, as
the one in which they were branched off to Valencia; and for two hours they
were kept waiting for the Cordova train. Oh! the misery of those wayside
stations in Spain! One long low room filled with smokers and passengers of
every class, struggling for chocolate, served in dirty cups by uncivil
waiters, with insufficient seats and scant courtesy: no wonder that the
Spaniards consider our waiting-rooms real palaces. You have no alternative
in the winter season but to endure this foetid, stifling atmosphere, and be
blinded with smoke, or else to freeze and shiver outside, where there are
no benches at all, and your only hope is to get a corner of a wall against
which you can lean and be sheltered from the bitter wind. The arrival of
the up train brought, therefore, unmixed joy to our party, who managed to
secure a compartment to themselves without any smokers (a rare privilege in
Spain), and thus got some sleep for a few hours. At six o'clock the train
stopped, the railroad went no further; so the passengers turned out
somewhat ruefully, in the cold, and gazed with dismay at the lumbering
dirty diligences, looking as if they had come out of the Ark, which were
drawn up, all in a row, at the station door, with ten, twelve, or fourteen
mules harnessed to each, and by which they and their luggage were to be
conveyed for the next eight hours. The station master was a Frenchman, and
with great civility, during the lading of the diligences, gave up to the
ladies his own tiny bedroom, and some fresh water to wash themselves a
little, and make themselves comfortable after their long night journey, for
there was no pretence of a waiting-room at this station.

Reader, did you ever go in a Spanish diligence? It was the first experience
of most of our party of this means of locomotion, and at first seemed
simply impossible. The excessive lowness of the carriages, the way in which
the unhappy passengers are jammed in, either into the _coupé_ in
front, or into the square box behind, unable to move or sit upright in
either; while the mules plunge and start off in every direction but the
right one, their drivers every instant jumping down and running by the side
of the poor beasts, which they flog unmercifully, vociferating in every
key; and that, not at first starting, but all the way, up hill and down
dale, with an energy which is as inexhaustible as it is despairing, till
either a pole cracks or a trace breaks, or some accident happens to a
wheel, and the whole lumbering concern stops with a jerk and a lurch which
threaten to roll everything and everybody into the gorge below.
{171}
Each diligence is accompanied by a "mayoral," or conductor, who has charge
of the whole equipage, and is a very important personage. This functionary
is generally gorgeously dressed, with embroidered jacket, scarlet sash
round the waist, gaiters with silver buttons and hanging leather strips,
and round his head a gay-colored handkerchief and a round black felt hat
with broad brim and feather, or else of the kind denominated "pork pie" in
England; he is here, there, and everywhere during the journey, arranging
the places of the passengers, the stations for halts, and the like. Besides
this dignitary, there is the "moto" or driver, whose business is to be
perpetually jumping down and flogging the far-off mules into a trot, which
he did with such cruelly that our travellers often hoped he would himself
get into trouble in jumping up again, which, unfortunately, he was always
too expert to do. Every mule has its name, and answers to it. They are
harnessed two abreast, a small boy riding on the leaders; and it is on his
presence of mind and skill that the guidance and safety of the whole team
depend. On this occasion, the "mayoral" and "moto" leant with their backs
against what was left of the windows of the _coupé_, which they
instantly smashed, the cold wind rushed in, and the passengers were
alternately splashed from head to foot with the mud cast up in their faces
by the mules' heels, or choked and blinded with dust. For neither
misfortune is there either redress or sympathy. The lower panels of the
floor and doors have holes cut in them to let out the water and mud; but
the same agreeable arrangement, in winter, lets in a wind which threatens
to freeze off your feet as you sit. A small boy, who, it is to be supposed,
was learning his trade, held on by his eyelids to a ledge below, and was
perpetually assisting in screaming and flogging. A struggle at some kind of
vain resistance, and then a sullen despair and a final making up one's mind
that, after all, it can't last forever, are the phases through which the
unhappy travellers pass during these agreeable diligence journeys. It was
some little time before our party could get sufficiently reconciled to
their misery to enjoy the scenery. But when they could look about them,
they found themselves passing through a beautiful gorge, and up a zigzag
road, like the lower spurs of an Alpine pass, over the Sierra Morena. Then
began the descent, during which some of the ladies held their breath,
expecting to be dashed over the parapet at each sharp turn in the road; the
pace of the mules was never relaxed, and the unwieldy top-heavy mass
oscillated over the precipice below in a decidedly unpleasant manner. Then
they came into a fertile region of olives and aloes, and so on by divers
villages and through roads which the late rains had made almost impassable,
and in passing over which every bone in their bodies seemed dislocated in
their springless vehicle, till, at two o'clock in the afternoon, they
reached the station, where, to their intense relief, they again came upon a
railroad. Hastily swallowing some doubtful chocolate, they established
themselves once more comfortably in the railway carriage; but after being
in the enjoyment of this luxury for half an hour, the train came, all of a
sudden, to a stand-still; and the doors being opened, they were politely
told that they must _walk_, as a landslip had destroyed the line for
some distance. Coming at last to a picturesque town with a fine bridge over
the Guadalquiver, they were allowed once more to take their seats in the
carriages, and finally arrived at Cordova at eight o'clock at night, after
twenty-four hours of travelling, alternating from intense cold to intense
heat, very tired indeed, horribly dusty and dirty, and without having had
any church all day.

  To be continued

--------

{172}

    From All the Year Round.

    Looking Down The Road.


  In the early spring-time
    My long watch began;
  Through the daisied meadows
    Merry children ran;
  Happy lovers wandered
    Through the forest deep,
  Seeking mossy corners
    Where the violets sleep.
  I in one small chamber
    Patiently abode--
  At my garret window
    Looking down the road.

  Watching, watching, watching,
    For what came not back!
  Summer marked in flowers
    All her sunny track,
  Hid the dim blue distance
    With her robe of green,
  Bathed the nearer meadows
    In a golden sheen.
  Full the fierce sure arrows
    Glanced and gleamed and glowed
  On my garret window
    Looking down the road.

  Watching, watching, watching,
    Oh! the pain of hope!
  Autumn's shadows lengthened
    On the breezy slope;
  Groups of tired reapers
    Led the loaded wains
  From the golden meadows,
    Through the dusky lanes;
  Home-returning footsteps
    O'er the pathway strode--
  Not the one I looked for.
    Coming down the road.

{173}

  Winter stripped the branches
    Of the roadside tree:
  But the frosty hours
    Brought no change for me--
  Save that I could better,
    Through the branches brown.
  See the tired travellers
    Coming from the town.
  Pitiless December
    Rained and hailed and snowed.
  On my garret window
    Looking down the road.

  At the last I saw it
    (Not the form I sought),
  Something brighter, purer,
    Blessed my sleeping thought.
  'Twas a white-robed angel--
    At his steadfast eyes
  Paled the wild-fire brightness
    Of old memories.
  Nearer drew the vision,
    While with bated breath
  Some one seemed to whisper,
    The Deliverer, "Death."
  Then my dreaming spirit,
    Eased of half its load,
  Saw the white wings lessen
    Down the dusty road.

  God has soothed my sorrow,
    He has purged my sin;
  Earthly hopes have perished--
    Heavenly rest I win.
  Dull and dead endurance
    Is no portion here;
  I am strong to labor,
    And my rest is near.
  Lifting my dull glances
    From the fields below,
  So the light of heaven
    Settles on my brow.
  O my God. I thank thee,
    Who that angel showed,
  From my garret window
    Looking down the road.

--------

{174}

  Original.

  Father Ignatius of St. Paul,[Footnote 42]

  Hon. and Rev. George Spencer.

    [Footnote 42: Life of F. Ignatius of St. Paul, Passionist. By the Rev.
    F. Pius a Sancto, Passionist. 1 vol. 12mo. Dublin, James Duffy.]

Fresh from the perusal of this book, we would gladly convey to others the
agreeable impression it has left on our imagination. It is an interesting
and impartial biography, full of pleasant incidents, simply narrated; with
the view of throwing light upon the character of F. Ignatius, and not upon
the personal views of his biographer. But we would rather dwell upon its
value as the life of a saintly man, whose circumstances were so nearly akin
to those of common Christians that no one can assert the impossibility of
imitating his example. We have observed, in reading the lives of the
saints, that one must himself be a saint to appreciate them aright.
Generally severed from us (to our shame be it spoken) by time, race, and
national habits, we are startled by strange details, and while wondering
over individual idiosyncrasies we lose sight of the heroic purity of
intention that hallowed almost every action of their mature lives.

In F. Ignatius we have a warm-hearted, frank, humorous Englishman, whose
memory is fresh in the hearts of thousands now living. Though belonging to
one of the noblest families in England, his training was simple, and his
position as rector in a country parish was not so dazzling as to set him
above the sympathies of those who read his life. His natural virtues were
weighed down by a love of approbation that has ruined many a soul before
now. He was accomplished, but not learned. Keen, sympathetic, and
perceptive, but neither a philosopher nor a logician. In short, he was not
set apart from the rest of humanity by any natural endowment; and yet one
lays down his biography with a sense of having made acquaintance with one
of the remarkable men of this century. Why? We cannot but suppose that it
was because he placed every faculty under the guidance of God, who worked
wonders with capacities by no means rare; and from an unready utterance
brought forth fruits of conversion that probably surprised no one so much
as the preacher himself.

Hon. George Spencer was the youngest child of John George, Earl Spencer,
and Lavinin, daughter of Sir Charles Bingham, afterward Earl of Lucan.

Earl Spencer was successively member of parliament, one of the lords of the
treasury, and first lord of the admiralty, succeeding Lord Chatham in the
last-named office in the year 1794. It was while Earl Spencer was lord of
the admiralty, in London, December 21, 1799, that the subject of our
narrative first saw the light, or what goes by the name of light, during a
December in London.

His first recollections, oddly enough, are of his six-year-old birthday,
when his sister's governess, a Swiss lady, took him aside as for serious
conversation, and told him of the existence of God, and some other truths
of religion. Possibly he had heard these things before, but the room at
Althorp where the scene took place, and the tender solicitude of the lady's
manner, were ever after imprinted on his memory as if connected with a
momentous occasion.

{175}

At nine years old, with his favorite brother, Frederick, be was carried in
a grand equipage to Eton, and placed under the charge of a private tutor,
the Rev. Richard Godley, who lived at the "Wharf," about half a mile from
the college buildings. Mr. Godley's rule was a severe but blessed one, and
young Spencer owed four years of marvellous innocence to its restrictions.
"Egyptian bondage" he thought it, poor little fellow, that several times a
day, summer and winter, be must run across the playgrounds to report
himself to the tutor. He lived between two fires: the wrath of elder boys
who called upon him to fag for them as he rushed through the
cricket-ground, and the terror of Mr. Godley's awful countenance if he and
Frederick arrived a few minutes late. "As might be expected," he says, in
his autobiography, "the more we were required to observe rules and customs
different from others, the more did a certain class of big bullies in the
school seem to count it their especial business to watch over us, as though
they might be our evil geniuses. A certain set of faces, consequently, I
looked upon with a kind of mysterious dread, and I was under a constant
sense of being as though in an enemy's country, obliged to guard against
dangers on all sides. Shrinking and skulking became my occupation beyond
the ordinary lot of little schoolboys, and my natural disposition to be
cowardly and spiritless was perhaps increased. I say perhaps, for other
circumstances might have made me worse; for what I was in the eyes of the
masters of public opinion in the school I really was--a chicken-hearted
creature, what in Eton language is called a _sawney_. It may be that
had I been from the first in free intercourse among the boys, instead of
being a good innocent one I might have been, what I suppose must be
reckoned one of the worst varieties of public school characters, a mean,
dishonorable one."

The experiment of close contact with other boys was too soon to be tried.
Mr. Godley's influence appeared to be dangerously evangelical. "The
Pilgrim's Progress" and "Alleine's Alarm" were recommended to George by his
tutor's sisters, and did not find favor at Althorp in the holidays. We next
hear of him at the Rev. ----'s, performing most of the duties of a footman
to one or two big boys, and enduring initiation in the iniquities of public
school-life. Everyone knows how valuable a prize to youthful tyrants is a
child in whom innocence and moral cowardice are combined; and such a prize
was George Spencer, blushing at immodest words, and ignorant of the nice
distinction between thieving and orchard robbing that exists in the minds
of school-boys only. Evening after evening the little boys' rooms were
invaded, their occupations broken up, and persecution carried on against
one or other of their set. For a little while Spencer used to find a little
time of peace when, after such a turmoil, be got into bed, said his
prayers, and cried himself to sleep. But the atmosphere was anti-religious,
and in the course of ten days be had given up all attempt to pray. A moment
of bitter self reproach awaited him. One day he was present when one of the
rudest of his tormentors was dressing himself. "To my surprise," he says,
"he turned to me, and with his usual civility said some such words as 'Now
hold your jaw,' and then, down on his knees near the bed, and his face
between his hands, said his prayers. I then saw for a moment to what I had
fallen, when even this fellow had more religion than unhappy I had
retained, but I had no grain of strength now left to rise. ..."

  "When I had ceased attempting to maintain my pious feelings, the best
  consolation I had was in the company of a few boys of a spirit congenial
  to what mine was now become. All the time that I remained at Eton I never
  learnt to take pleasure in the manly, active games for which it is so
  famous. It is not that I was without some natural talent for such things.
{176}
  I have since had my time of most ardent attachment to cricket, to tennis,
  shooting, hunting, and all active exercises: but my spirit was bent down
  at Eton; and among the boys who led the way in all manly pursuits, I was
  always shy and miserable, which was partly a cause and partly an effect
  of my being looked down upon by them. My pleasure there was in being with
  a few boys like myself, without spirit for these things, retired apart
  from the sight of others, amusing ourselves with making arbors and
  catching little fishes in the streams; and many were the hours I wasted
  in such childish things when I was grown far too old for them.

  "Oh! the happiness of a Catholic child, whose inmost soul is known to one
  whom God has charged with his salvation. Supposing I had been a Catholic
  child in such a situation--if such a supposition be possible--the pious
  feelings with which God inspired me would have been under the guidance of
  a tender spiritual father, who would have supplied exactly what I needed,
  when about to fall under the sense of unassisted weakness which I have
  described. He would have taught me to be innocent and firm in the midst
  of my trials, which would then have tended to exalt instead of oppressing
  my character. I would have kept my character not only clear in the sight
  of God, but honorable among my fellows, who soon would have given up
  their persecution when they found me steadfast; and I might have brought
  with me in the path of peace and justice many whom I followed in the dark
  ways of sin. But it is in vain to calculate on what I might have been had
  I been then a Catholic. God be praised, my losses I may yet recover, and
  perhaps even reap advantages from them."

So much for the sad and puny childhood of one who in after-life freed
himself absolutely from the bondage of public opinion. He who can truly
say, "Tu solus Domine!" has reached the sublimest height of dignity and
freedom.

If George Spencer's early years gave small promise of moral heroism, still
less would his youth lead one to look for great virtues in him. His
autobiography tells us that he yielded to the degrading temptations of
student life at Cambridge, not from inclination so much as because other
men set him the example. Two years of misery he endured, too, from the fear
that a courteous and merited apology made by him to a gentleman whom he had
unwittingly offended might have laid him open to the charge of cowardice.

As a scholar he ranked high, and held, at the same time, a good place among
athletes; thus showing advance in mind and body, while his soul was still
cramped by the fear of ridicule.

Then comes the continental tour, made after a grand and uninteresting
fashion; courier, servants, maids, and family physician. George's journal
is full of the sneers with which a well-bred English tourist is wont to
exorcise the demon of popery. He is much amused at the street-preaching of
a passionist father in Terracina; little dreaming that one day he himself
would perform the duties of a _svegliarino_, and with only partial
success too.

One admires constantly the good sense and high tone of Lord and Lady
Spencer. Invaluable was the example they gave their children; wonderful to
an American reader, the sway they exercised over their grown-up sons.

Soon after returning to England, Mr. Spencer took orders and entered upon
the life of a country clergyman. By fulfilling in person the arduous duties
which are too often left to a curate, he gave evidence of true nobility of
character; but so deficient in judgment and in deference to superiors was
his general conduct, that the world wondered more at his lack of common
sense than at his courage. Viewed from the present time, the germs of
sanctity are plainly visible in these vague struggles after perfection. He
practised great mortifications, concealing them as far as was possible. He
inveighed against tepidity wherever shown with an independence as valiant
as it was unpleasant to the objects of his condemnation. No very
comfortable member of a diocese was the Hon. Mr. Spencer in those days.
Bishop Bloomfield, his former tutor, bore his vagaries with fatherly
patience, and, looking through the mist of Methodism that hung about his
views, acutely detected the true difficulty, and recommended as a cure The
Poor Man's Preservative against Popery, by Blanco White.
{177}
On one occasion when Dr. Bloomfield read prayers in his own church, St.
Botolph's, Bishopsgate, Mr. Spencer, who was invited to preach, took the
occasion to explain these evangelical views of religion, intimating that
the congregation were not in the habit of hearing the gospel fully and
faithfully expounded. The bishop was wounded, but he only said: "George,
how could you preach such a sermon as that? In future I must look over your
sermon before you go into the pulpit."

Here is a scrap from his journal about the same time, 1824, or thereabout:
"The Bishop of Bristol preached in the morning for the schools a sermon
worthy of Plato rather than St. Paul." And another day: "Went with all
speed to Craven chapel, where I heard Irving, the Scotch minister, preach
nearly two hours. I was greatly delighted with his eloquence and stout
Christian doctrine, though his manner is most blamably extravagant." And
again: "I went with Mr. A---- and Miss B---- to hear Mrs. Fry perform, and
was delighted to hear her expounding to the prisoners in Newgate."

Among evangelical believers, Mr. Spencer found an energy and a missionary
spirit which harmonized with his own zealous nature. In theological matters
he was dissatisfied whithersoever he turned. In 1822, soon after being made
deacon, his early tendencies to high church principles had received a blow
from which they never recovered. He shall tell the circumstances in his own
simple words.

  "I was at the time living at Althorp, my Father's principal residence in
  the country, serving as a curate to the parish to which it was attached,
  though the park itself is extraparochial. Among the visitors who resorted
  there was one of the most distinguished scholars of the day, to whom, as
  to many more of the Anglican Church, I owe a debt of gratitude for the
  interest which he took in me, and for the help I actually received from
  him in the course of inquiry, which has happily terminated in the haven
  of the true church. I should like to make a grateful and honorable
  mention of his name, but as this has been found fault with I forbear,
  [Footnote 43] I was one day explaining to him with earnestness the line
  of argument which I was pursuing with dissenters, and my hopes from it; I
  suppose I expected encouragement, such as I had received from many
  others. But he simply and candidly said: 'These would be very convenient
  doctrines if we could make use of them, but they are available only for
  Roman Catholics; they will not serve us.' I saw in a moment the truth of
  his remark, and his character and position gave it additional weight. I
  did not answer him; but as a soldier who has received what he feels to be
  a mortal wound will suddenly stand still, and then quietly retire out of
  the mélée, and seek a quiet spot to die in, so I went away with my high
  churchism mortally wounded in the very prime of its vigor and youth, to
  die forever to the character of an Anglican high churchman. Why did not
  this open my eyes, you will say, to the truth of Catholicity? I answer,
  simply because my early prejudices were too strong. The unanswerable
  remark of my friend was like a _reductio ad absurdum_ of all high
  church ideas. If they were true, the Catholic would be so; which is
  absurd, as I remember Euclid would say, 'Therefore,' etc. The grand
  support of the high church system, church authority, having been thus
  overthrown, it was an easy though gradual work to get out of my mind all
  its minor details and accomplishments, one after another; such as regard
  for holy places, for holy days, for consecrated persons, for
  ecclesiastical writers; finally, almost all definite dogmatic notions. It
  would seem that all was slipping away, when, coming to the conviction of
  the truth of Catholicity, some years after, it was with extraordinary
  delight I found myself picking up again the shattered dispersed pieces of
  the beautiful fabric, and placing them now in better order on the right
  foundation, solid and firm, no longer exposed to such a catastrophe as
  had upset my card-castle of Anglican churchhmanship."

    [Footnote 43: This distinguished scholar was Dr. Elmaly.]

The divided state of his own parish occupied Mr. Spencer's thoughts, and he
devoted himself to winning dissenters into the fold by other means than
high church arguments. He tried to stretch open the gates of the
establishment so as to admit all classes of religionists to her communion.
Another system seemed more likely to prove efficacious, namely, the
beautiful example he set of devotion in his parish; making great sacrifices
for the poor, and qualifying himself to perform the offices of a physician
to the body as well as to the soul.

{178}

But new difficulties were in store for him in matters of faith. The
Athanasian creed begins to disturb him, not because of its doctrines, but
because of the condemnatory clauses at the beginning and end. He is now
rector of Brington, with excellent prospects of advancement. Is he not
bound to resign his position, since he cannot agree in full with the
Establishment? "No," says the Bishop of Peterborough; "there is a
difference between an open attack upon the liturgy and thirty-nine
articles, and the entertaining of private doubts to be confided to a friend
with the hope of having them removed. It would have been a sufficient cause
for choosing another profession than that of the ministry; but, being
already in holy orders, it is not a sufficient reason for resignation."
"No," said Dr. Blomfield; "it is one thing to doubt the truth of a
doctrine, and another to believe it false. Besides, the Protestant Church
does not pretend to pronounce a sentence of condemnation like the Church of
Rome. These clauses are merely intended to assert the truth of certain
dogmas very emphatically."

That this line of argument was not convincing it is easy to see. The result
was that Mr. Spencer informed his superiors that he should give up reading
the Athanasian creed in his church. Then feeling certain that he was no
longer in danger of promotion, he threw himself with renewed ardor into the
work of reconciling all sects to each other.

His family as a last resource bethought them of marrying him to a lady who
had charmed him in his college days. No; his conviction was that he ought
not to marry. One pities the disappointment of Lord and Lady Spencer. This
son, whom they had placed in an admirable position in life, who had every
attraction of manner and person that could insure worldly success, seemed
determined to thwart their efforts for his happiness, and to disappoint
parental ambition. But they little imagined how far his reckless
unworldliness would finally carry him.

On the 23d of November, 1827, when he returned from his parochial
visitation, he found a letter purporting to come from a gentlemen in Lille,
who was "grievously troubled about the arguments for popery." Ever desirous
to strengthen the wavering, Rev. Mr. Spencer entered into a long
correspondence, which resulted in a promise on his own part to follow his
correspondent into the Catholic Church if he would acknowledge his true
name and pause awhile before joining the Catholics. He tells us:

  "I heard no more of him till after my conversion and arrival at Rome,
  when I discovered that my correspondent was a lady, who had herself been
  converted a short time before she wrote to me. I never heard her name
  before (Miss Dolling), nor am I aware that she had ever seen me; but God
  moved her to desire and pray for my salvation, which she also undertook
  to bring about in the way I have related. I cannot say that I entirely
  approve of the stratagem to which she had recourse, but her motive was
  good, and God gave success to her attempt, for it was this that first
  directed my attention particularly to inquire about the Catholic
  religion, though she lived not to know the accomplishment of her wishes
  and prayers. She died at Paris, a year before my conversion, when about
  to take the veil as a nun of the Sacred Heart; and I trust I have in her
  an intercessor in heaven, as she prayed for me so fervently on earth."

Not being restrained, as was Mr. Spencer, by a sense of personal gratitude,
we may be allowed to express entire disapproval of the stratagem of the
"Maid of Lille." Like most other plots, it was quite unnecessary. Rev. Mr.
Spencer would have listened with profound attention to any person who
claimed to possess the truth, and it was offering him an indignity to trick
him into attention, as foolish mothers decoy their children to the
dentist's.

None the less, however, were Miss Dolling's arguments strong and
convincing: "That Scripture without tradition is quite insufficient for
salvation.
{179}
We cannot know anything about the Scriptures themselves, their composition,
inspiration, interpretation, without tradition. Besides, the New Testament
was not the text-book of the apostles. It is a collection of some things
they were inspired to write for the edification of the first Christians and
others who had not seen our Lord; and the epistles are a number of letters
from inspired men bound up together in one volume. The body of doctrine,
with its bearings, symmetry, extent, and obligation, was delivered orally
by the apostles, and the epistles must be consonant to that system as well
as explanatory of portions of it. Only by the unbroken succession of
pastors from the apostles to the present time can we have any safeguard as
to what we shall believe, and how we are to believe. The apostles and their
successors were 'to teach all nations,' and Christ promised them, and them
alone, the unerring guide of the Holy Spirit." She then assigns to
tradition the office of bearing testimony to what the doctrines of the
church have been and are at present. The definitions of councils are simple
declarations that such and such is the belief then, and from the beginning
of the Catholic Church. They state what is, not invent what is to be. Now,
history or written tradition, as contradistinguished from Scripture,
testifies to every simple tenet of the Catholic Church--her creeds,
liturgy, sacraments, jurisdiction. It testifies unerringly, too, even from
the objections of heretics, to the fact that this church has been always
believed divine in her origin, divine in her teaching, infallible and
unerring in her solemn pronouncements. This is fact, and who can gainsay
it?

Toward the end of the year 1829, Rev. Mr. Spencer made the acquaintance of
Mr. Ambrose Lisle Phillips, who was then seventeen years old. A few weeks
later he visited this new friend at Garendon Park, Loughbro', a visit the
result of which is best given in his own words:

  "On Sunday, Jan. 24, 1830, I preached in my church, and in the evening
  took leave of my family for the week, intending to return on the Saturday
  following to my ordinary duties at home. But our Lord ordered better for
  me. During the week I spent on this visit, I passed many hours daily in
  conversation with Phillips, and was satisfied beyond all my expectations
  with the answers he gave to the different questions I proposed about the
  principal tenets and practices of the Catholics. During the week we were
  in company with several other Protestants, and among them some
  distinguished clergymen of the Church of England, who occasionally joined
  in our discussions. I was struck with observing how the advantage always
  appeared on his side in the arguments which took place between them,
  notwithstanding their superior age and experience; and I saw how weak was
  the cause in behalf of which I had hitherto been engaged; I felt ashamed
  of arguing any longer against what I began to see clearly could not be
  fairly disproved. I now openly declared myself completely shaken, and,
  though I determined to take no decided step until I was entirely
  convinced, I determined to give myself no rest till I was satisfied, and
  had little doubt now of what the result would be. But yet I thought not
  how soon God would make the truth clear to me. I was to return home, as I
  have said, on Saturday. Phillips agreed to accompany me on the day
  previous to Leicester, where we might have further conversation with
  Father Caestryck, the Catholic missionary established in that place. I
  imagined that I might take some weeks longer for consideration, but Mr.
  Caestryck's conversation that afternoon overcame all my opposition. He
  explained to me, and made me see, that the way to come at the knowledge
  of the true religion is not to contend, as men are disposed to do, about
  each individual point, but to submit implicitly to the authority of
  Christ, and of those to whom he has committed the charge of his flock. He
  set before me the undeniable but wonderful fact of the agreement of the
  Catholic Church all over the world, in one faith, under one head; he
  showed me the assertions of Protestants that the Catholic Church had
  altered her doctrines were not supported by evidence; he pointed out the
  wonderful, unbroken chain of the Roman pontiffs; he observed to me how in
  all ages the church, under their guidance, had exercised an authority,
  indisputed by her children, of cutting off from her communion all who
  opposed her faith and disobeyed her discipline. I saw that her assumption
  of this power was consistent with Christ's commission to his apostles to
  teach all men to the end of the world; and his declaration that those who
  would not hear the pastors of his church rejected him. What right, then,
  thought I, had Luther and his companions to set themselves against the
  united voice of the church?
{180}
  I saw that he rebelled against the authority of God when he set himself
  up as an independent guide. He was bound to obey the Catholic Church--how
  then should I not be equally bound to return to it? And need I fear that
  I should be led into error by trusting to those guides to whom Christ
  himself thus directed me? No! I thought this impossible. Full of these
  impressions, I left Mr. Caestryck's house to go to my inn, whence I was
  to to return home next morning. Phillips accompanied me, and took this
  last occasion to impress on me the awful importance of the decision which
  I was called upon to make. At length I answered:

  "'I am overcome. There is no doubt of the truth. One more Sunday I will
  preach to my congregation, and then put myself into Mr. Foley's hands,
  and conclude this business.'

  "It may be thought with what joyful ardor he embraced this declaration,
  and warned me to declare my sentiments faithfully in these my last
  discourses. The next minute led me to this reflection: Have I any right
  to stand in that pulpit, being once convinced that the church is
  heretical to which it belongs? Am I safe in exposing myself to the danger
  which may attend one day's travelling while I turn my back on the church
  of God, which now calls upon me to unite myself to her forever? I said to
  Phillips, 'If this step is right for me to take next week, it is my duty
  to take it now. My resolution is made; to-morrow I will be received into
  the church.' We lost no time in despatching a messenger to my father, to
  inform him of this unexpected event. As I was forming my last resolution,
  the thought of him came across me; will it not be said that I endanger
  his very life by so sudden and severe a shock? The words of our Lord rose
  before me and answered all my doubts: 'He that hateth not father and
  mother, and brothers and sisters, and houses and lands, and his own life
  too, cannot be my disciple.' To the Lord, then, I trusted for the support
  and comfort of my dear father under the trial which, in obedience to his
  call, I was about to inflict upon him. I had no further anxiety to
  disturb me. God alone knows the peace and joy with which I laid me down
  that night to rest. The next day, at nine o'clock, the church received me
  for her child."

Far from finding himself harshly received by his family after his
conversion, Mr. Spencer's domestic relations remained quite undisturbed. It
was in the early days of conversions in England; Tractarianism was in its
very infancy, and Earl Spencer had always shown kindness to Catholics, as
to a vanquished enemy.

When his son returned from Rome as a priest in 1832 and took possession of
his parish at West Bromwich, one of the poorest in the diocese, Lord
Spencer made ample provision for his support. In 1834 this excellent
nobleman died, and with the legacy left by him to Father Spencer, several
churches and missions were established. It was a theory of Father Spencer's
that the evangelical counsels could be practiced as well in the world as in
a religious life. In order to carry out this experiment he placed all his
possessions at the command of Right Rev. Dr. Walsh, his bishop, who
appointed an _économe_ to supply his necessities and those of his
church.

That his conversion was not allowed to pass without sharp criticism from
Protestants can be easily imagined. He was pensive partly by nature,
partly, perhaps, from the feeling that his actions were misunderstood by
his old companions and friends. All the more attractive was the quaint
humor that lighted up his conversation. "One day when speaking with a
brother priest with sad earnestness about the spiritual destitution of the
poor people around him, who neither knew God nor would listen to those who
were willing to teach them, a poor woman knocked at the sacristy door, and
was ordered to come in; she fell on her knees very reverently to get Father
Spencer's blessing as soon as she approached him. His companion observed
that this poor woman reminded him of the mother of the sons of Zebedee, who
came to our Savior _adorans_. 'Yes,' replied Father Spencer, with a
very arch smile, 'and not only _adorans_, but _petens aliquid ab
eo_.'"

Though so harshly handled sometimes by Protestants, Mr. Spencer exercised a
forbearance toward them that all converts would do well to imitate.
Remembering his own honest delusions, he attributed sincerity to the
adherents of every sect.
{181}
"Some were supposing once in his presence that it was impossible for
followers of Joanna Southcote, and the like, not to be fully aware that
they were being deluded. Father Ignatius said it was not so, and related a
peculiar case that he witnessed himself. He happened to be passing through
Birmingham, and had occasion to enter a shop there to order something. The
shopkeeper asked him if he had heard of the great light that had arisen in
these modern times. He said no. 'Well, then,' repeated the shopman, 'here,
sir, is something to enlighten you,' handing him a neatly got up pamphlet.
He had not time to glance at the title when his friend behind the counter
ran on at a great rate in a speech something to the following effect: That
the four gospels were all figures and myths, that the epistles were only
faint foreshadowings of the real sun of justice that was now at length
arisen. The Messias was come in the person of a Mr. Ward, and he would see
the truth demonstrated beyond the possibility of a doubt by looking at the
gospel he held in his hand. While the shopman was expressing hopes of
converting him, he took the opportunity of looking at the pamphlet, and
found that all this new theory of religion was built upon a particular way
of printing the text: _'Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace
to--Ward's men._' On turning away in disgust from his fruitless
remonstrances with this specimen of _Ward's men_, he found some of
_Ward's women_, also, in the same place, and overheard them
exclaiming: 'Oh, little England knows what a treasure they have in ----
jail!' The pretended Messias happened to be in prison for felony at the
time." He declared that these poor creatures were entirely sincere and
earnest in the faith they had in this malefactor.

This belief in the genuineness of all kinds of religious convictions,
joined to his passionate love of country, led Father Spencer to engage in
the great work of his life--the forming of an Association of Prayers for
the Conversion of England. Mr. Phillips joined with him heartily in the
project, and it was a new element of joy in their beautiful friendship.
From the year 1838 to the day of his death, Father Spencer labored
unceasingly for this end. Many persons grew sick of the very sound of the
words, and did not hesitate to tell him so either; but through praise,
blame, success, or ridicule he labored unceasingly,--and works now, we may
be sure, in heaven this very day for the same end. Who can doubt that such
petitions will be granted?

After nine years of hardship, persecution, and loving labor as a parish
priest, Father Spencer was called to Oscott College to take charge of the
spiritual affairs of the students.

By education he was well suited to hold so distinguished a position. He was
admirably versed in the French, Italian, and German languages; a good
classical and mathematical scholar of course (having been a first-class
Cambridge man), and well read both in Protestant and Catholic theology. His
intercourse with the young men was very charming. He would make up a game
at cricket, go heartily into all their youthful sports, and even give
lessons to beginners. In spiritual matters he had a very fascinating way of
throwing a certain poetry into what is usually considered the prosaic part
of priestly duties. Between these two moods there was a third, in which,
with a kindly assumption of equality, as it were, he would take them into
his interests as genially as he entered into theirs.

In 1844 Father Spencer went abroad for his health, and accomplished much
for the Association of Prayers. In the following year he returned to
England, and entered at once into retreat under the direction of Father
Thomas Clarke, S.J., in Hodder place. From this retreat he came forth with
a fixed determination to join the order of the Passionists, lately
established in England by his friend Padre Domenico. How happy the results
of this decision were the following pages will show.

{182}

The Congregation of the Passion was founded by Blessed Paul of the Cross
about the middle of the last century, and approved by Benedict XIV.,
Clement XIV., and Pius VI. Its object is to work for the sanctification of
the souls of the faithful; to which end it uses, not only preaching and the
sacraments, but the diffusion of devotion to the passion of Christ. This
work is accomplished by means of missions, retreats, and parish work in
passionist houses. If necessary, the fathers take charge of a parish;
otherwise they work in their own churches as missioners. They teach only
their own younger members, and they go on foreign missions when sent by the
Holy Father or the Propaganda.

  "To keep the members of an order always ready for their out-door work,"
  says F. Pius, "there are certain rules for their interior life which may
  be likened to the drill or parade of soldiers in their quarters. This
  discipline varies according to the spirit of each order.

  "The idea of a passionist's work will lead us to expect what his
  discipline must be. The spirit of a passionist is a spirit of atonement.
  He says with St. Paul: 'I rejoice in my sufferings, and fill up those
  things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in my flesh for his
  body, which is the church.' Coloss. i.24. For this cause the interior
  life of a passionist is rather austere. He has to rise shortly after
  midnight from a bed of straw to chaunt matins and lauds, and spend some
  time in meditation. He has two hours more meditation during the day, and
  altogether about five hours of choir work in the twenty-four. He fasts
  and abstains from flesh meat three times in the week, all the year round,
  besides Lent and Advent. He is clad in a coarse black garment; wears
  sandals instead of shoes; and practises other acts of penance of minor
  importance.

  "This seems rather a hard life; but an ordinary constitution does not
  find the least difficulty in complying with the letter of the rule. It is
  withal a happy, cheerful life; for it seems the nature of penance to make
  the heart of the penitent light and gladsome, 'rejoicing in suffering.'"

The fathers are bound by these rules only when living in the houses of
their order. Outside they accommodate themselves to circumstances and take
life as they find it; not very easy, as we shall see by the experiences of
F. Ignatius. The superior has, moreover, the right to relax the rule for
those who are ill or overworked.

At forty-seven Hon. and Rev. George Spencer entered upon this austere life.
There was little to attract human nature to the order. Four foreigners,
living in a wretched house, friendless and nearly penniless, were the
principal occupants of Aston Hall, and even this unenviable position they
had reached only after four years of labor and trial.

The noble novice submitted to more than ordinary tests of vocation. Rank,
age, and education made him especially the object of distrust to F.
Constantine, master of novices, who knew that true kindness must turn the
rough side of discipline to a candidate for admission.

  "A day or two after his arrival he was ordered to wash down an old dirty
  flight of stairs. He tucked up his sleeves and fell to using his brush,
  tub, and soapsuds with as much zest and good-will as if he had been a
  maid-of-all-work. Of course he was no great adept at this sort of
  employment, and probably his want of skill drew down some sharp rebukes
  from his overseer. Some tender-hearted religious never could forget the
  sight of this venerable ecclesiastic, trying to scour the crevices and
  crannies to the satisfaction of his new master. He got through it well
  and took the corrections so beautifully that in a few days he was voted
  to the habit."

A little suffering there was for F. Ignatius (as we must now call him) from
homesickness and the difficulty of adapting himself to the small items of
novice discipline. Chilled feet, a hard bed, and meagre diet were not quite
easy to bear. But his hardest trial was the consideration of his
companions, who tried to spare him humiliations, and take upon themselves
works that seemed degrading for one of his standing. Austerities were soon
forgotten, but dispensations were true afflictions to one whose wish with
regard to life was ceaseless labor, and with regard to death "to die unseen
and unknown in a ditch."

{183}

The story of his fifteen years of religious life is beautifully told by his
biographer. Only under the restrain& of a religious role did his gifts and
virtues receive their right development. It was like a second youth, a
second training for life; undue impetuosity was restrained, zeal,
generosity, charity, tenderness, all found an object and a wise direction.
Surely never was sanctity made more attractive than in the person of the
noble and gentle F. Ignatius. Great was the rejoicing among postulants and
novices when his arrival was announced at any one of the passionist houses.
Anecdote, mirth, kind and sympathizing intercourse were in store for the
recreation wherever he appeared, clad in his coarse attire, with a brace of
rough drogget bags slung over his broad shoulders. The journey had been
made, they might be sure, in the third-class cars, "because there was no
fourth class." The spirit of holy poverty had grown to be a sort of passion
with him, only to be surpassed by his zeal for the salvation of souls. He
treated himself, and wished others to treat him, like a beggar; thankful
for any favor, but cheerfully submissive to refusal. When he had a long
journey before him, if anyone offered him a "lift" in a cart or wagon, he
gladly accepted it; if not, he was quite contented. He seldom refused a
meal when travelling, and would ask for something to eat at any house upon
the road, if necessary. At home he generally washed and mended his own
clothes, and when he was superior would allow no one to perform menial
offices for him. In dress he dreaded overnicety, and would as gladly wear a
cast-off tartan as anything else, if it did not tend to throw discredit
upon his order. For several years he wore an old mantle belonging to a
religious who had died, and only left it off at the desire of the
provincial. This was by no means his natural bent. Those who knew him as a
young man say that he would hunt through the hosiers' shops in a dozen
streets in London to find articles that could satisfy his fastidious taste.
But, to return to the pleasure which his presence in a community always
gave:

  "His visits at home were like meteor flashes, bright and beautiful, and
  always made us regret that we could not enjoy his edifying company for a
  longer time. Those who are much away on the external duties of the order
  find the rule a little severe when they return; to Father Ignatius it
  seemed a small heaven of refreshing satisfaction. His coming home was
  usually announced to the community a day or two before, and all were
  promising themselves rare treats from his presence among them. It was
  cheering to see the porter run in beaming with joy as he announced the
  glad tidings, 'Father Ignatius is come!' The exuberance of his own
  delight, as he greeted first one and then another of his companions,
  added to our own joy. In fact the day Father Ignatius came home almost
  became a holiday by custom. Those days were; and we feel inclined to tire
  our readers by expatiating on them, as if writing brought them back.

  "Whenever he arrived at one of our houses, and had a day or two to stay,
  it was usual for the younger religious, such as novices and students, to
  go to him, one by one, for conference. He liked this very much, and would
  write to higher superiors for permission to turn off at Broadway, for
  instance, on his way to London, in order to make acquaintance with the
  young religious. His counsels had often a lasting effect; many who were
  inclined to leave the life they had chosen remained steadfast after a
  conference with him. He did not give commonplace solutions to
  difficulties, but he had some peculiar phrase, some quaint axiom, some
  droll piece of spirituality to apply to every little trouble that came
  before him. He was specially happy in his fund of anecdote, and could
  tell one, it was believed, on any subject that came before him. This
  extraordinary gift of conversational power made the conferences
  delightful. The novices, when they assembled for recreation, and gave
  their opinions on F. Ignatius, whom many had spoken to for the first time
  in their life, nearly all would conclude, 'If ever there was a saint,
  he's one.'

  "It was amusing to observe how they prepared themselves for forming their
  opinion. They all heard of his being a great saint, and some fancied he
  would eat nothing at all for one day, and might attempt a little
  vegetables on the next. One novice, in particular, had made up his mind
  to this, and to his great surprise he saw Father Ignatius eat an extra
  good breakfast; and when about to settle into a rash judgment, he saw the
  old man preparing to walk seven miles to a railway station on the
  strength of his meal. Another novice thought such a saint would never
  laugh or make anyone else laugh; to his agreeable disappointment, he
  found that Father Ignatius brought more cheerfulness into the recreation
  than had been there for some time.
{184}
  We gathered around him, by a kind of instinct, and so entertaining was he
  that one felt it a mortification to be called away from the recreation
  room while Father Ignatius was in it. He used to recount with peculiar
  grace and fascinating wit scenes he went through in his life. There is
  scarcely an anecdote in this book we have not heard him relate. He was
  most ingenuous. Ask him what question you pleased, he would answer it if
  he knew it. In relating an anecdote he often spoke in five or six
  different tones of voices; he imitated the manner and action of those he
  knew to such perfection that laughter had to pass into admiration. He
  seldom laughed outright, and even if he did he would very soon stop. If
  he came across a number of Punch, he ran over some of the sketches at
  once and then he would be observed to stop, laugh, and lay it down at
  once as if to deny himself further enjoyment. It is needless to say there
  was nothing rollicking or off-handed in his wit--never; it was subdued,
  sweet, delicate, and lively. ... In fact, a recreation presided over by
  Father Ignatius was the most innocent and gladsome one could imagine.

  "In one thing Father Ignatius did not go against anticipation, he was
  most exact in the observance of our rules. He would always be the first
  in for midnight office. Many a time the younger portion of the community
  used to make arrangements over night to be in before him, but it was no
  use. Once, indeed, a student arrived in choir before him, and Father
  Ignatius appeared so crestfallen at being beaten that the student would
  never be in before him again, and would delay on the way if he thought
  Father Ignatius had not yet passed. He seemed particularly happy when he
  could light the lamps or gas for matins. He was child-like in his
  obedience. He would not transgress the most trifling regulation. It was
  usual with him to say, 'I cannot understand those persons who say, Oh! I
  am all right if I get to purgatory. We should be more generous with
  Almighty God. I don't intend to go to purgatory, and if I do I must know
  what for.' 'But, Father Ignatius,' a father would say, 'we fall into so
  many imperfections that it seems presumptuous to attempt to escape scot
  free.' 'Well,' he would reply, 'nothing can send us to purgatory but a
  wilful, venial sin, and may the Lord preserve us from such a thing as
  that; a religious ought to die before being guilty of the least wilful
  fault.'"

In the year 1850, Father Ignatius made the resolution of never being idle a
moment, and carried it out to the end of his life. Bergamo's Pensieri ed
Affetti he translated in railway stations while waiting for trains, before
and after dinner, and in intervals between confessions. Of letter-writing
he made a kind of duty, and on one occasion he wrote seventy-eight in the
course of two free days. Not mere notes, either, were his letters, but
epistles full of thought and sympathy for his correspondent.

  "His days were indeed full days, and he scarcely ever went to bed until
  he had shaken himself out of nodding asleep over his table three or four
  times. No one ever heard him say that he was tired and required rest;
  rest he never had, except on his hard bed or in his quiet grave. If any
  man ever ate his bread in the sweat of his brow, it was Father Ignatius
  of St. Paul, the ever-toiling passionist."

Illness, unless it kept him in his bed, never interfered with the
performance of his duties. When superior, he used his power to secure the
hardest work for himself. During the time of his rectorship in Sutton, he
would preach and sing mass after hearing confessions all the morning;
attend sick calls, preach in the evening at some distant parish, come home
perhaps at eleven o'clock, say his office, and be the first to come to
matins at two o'clock. The Father Provincial found him so ingenious in
eluding privileges that he placed him under obedience in matters of health
to one of the priests of his community, whom he strictly obeyed ever after.

Once a cramp or some accident had made him fall into a ditch where he got
drenched and covered with mud. On returning from the sick call which he was
attending, he found a friend at the house, who sympathized with his
especial interests. Down he sat for a good talk upon the conversion of
England, and at the end of two hours was frightened off by one of the
religious to change his clothes.

When giving a retreat somewhere in midwinter, the shameful carelessness of
his entertainers allowed him to sleep in a room where there was neither bed
nor fire, and where the snow drifted in under the door. In the morning it
occurred to some one that perhaps Father Ignatius had occupied this
apartment.
{185}
"A person ran down to see, and there was the old saint amusing himself by
gathering up the snow that came into his room, and making little balls of
it for kitten to run after. The kitten and himself seem to have become
friends by having slept together in his rug the night before, and both were
disappointed by the intrusion of the wandering visitor."

But though the good passionist was utterly forgetful of his "own rights,"
as the saying goes, he well knew how to administer a rebuke if justice
demanded it:

  "Once he was fiercely abused when begging, and as the reviler came to a
  full stop in his froward speech, Father Ignatius quietly retorted: 'Well,
  as you have been so generous to me personally, perhaps you would be so
  kind as to give me something now for my community.' This had a remarkable
  effect. It procured him a handsome offering then, as well as many others
  ever since."

On another occasion his knock was answered by a very superb footman. Father
Ignatius gave his errand and religious name, with a request to see the lady
or gentleman of the house. The servant returned in a moment with the
information that the gentleman was out and the lady engaged and also unable
to help him. "Perhaps she is not aware that I am the Honorable Mr.
Spencer," said the mendicant. Mercury bowed courteously and retired. In a
minute or two came a rustling of silks and the sound of quick steps
tripping down stairs. The lady entered with blush and courtesy and apology.
She had not known that it was he, and there were so many impostors. "But
what will you take, my dear sir?" she exclaimed, ringing the bell, before
he could accept or decline the proposal. Father Ignatius said that he did
not stand in need of anything to eat, and that he never took wine; but that
he was in need of money for a good purpose, and would be glad to accept
anything that she could give him of that kind. The lady instantly handed
him a five-pound note, with many regrets that she could not make it more.
He took the note, and, folding it carefully away in his pocket, made his
acknowledgments after this fashion: "Now, I am very sorry to have to tell
you that the alms you have given me will do you very little good. If I had
not been born of a noble family, you would have turned me away with
coldness and contempt. I take the money because it will be as useful to me
as if it were given from a good motive; but I would advise you for the
future, if you have any regard for your soul, to let the love of God, and
not human respect, prompt your almsgiving." Then taking his hat, he bade
his amazed benefactress good morning, and left her to meditate upon purity
of intention.

Notwithstanding his fortitude and independence of spirit, we may gather
from the following extract from his letters that begging cost him some
effort:

  "My present life is pleasant when money comes kindly; but when I get
  refused or walk a long way and find everyone out, it is a bit mortifying.
  That is best gain for me I suppose, though not what I am travelling for.
  ... I should not have had the time this morning to write to you had it
  not been for a disappointment in meeting a young man, who was to have
  been my begging guide for part of the day; and so I had to come home and
  stay until it is time to go and try my fortune in the enormous
  market-house, where there are innumerable stalls with poultry, eggs,
  fruit, meat, etc., kept in great part by Irishmen and women, on whom I
  have to-day presently to go and dance attendance, as this is the great
  market-day. I feel when going out on a job like this, as a poor child
  going in a bathing machine to be dipped in the sea, _frissonnant_;
  but the Irish are so good-natured and generous that they generally make
  the work among them full of pleasure when once I am in it."

These expeditions extended not only through Great Britain, but even to the
Continent sometimes. As he was passing through Cologne one day, he met his
brother Frederick, then Earl Spencer. At first his lordship looked
wonderingly at him, and then, recognizing his features, exclaimed: "Hilloa,
George, what are you doing here?" "Begging," was the prompt reply, and then
the two fell into a friendly chat about old times.

{186}

Strangely enough, the only member of the Spencer family who ever treated
Father Ignatius with the least harshness was this favorite brother, who, on
succeeding to the title, laid such conditions upon his visiting the family
estate that priestly dignity forbade his going home. "Twelve years have I
been an exile from Althorp," he said in 1857. But in that same year the
earl relented and invited his brother to make him a visit. The letter
joyfully accepting this tardy invitation was read by Lord Spencer upon his
death-bed. This bereavement was a grievous blow to Father Ignatius.

In 1862 he visited Althorp. The present earl carried out his father's good
resolutions to the utmost, and even restored a part of the annuity which
had been diverted from Father Ignatius to other objects. Before leaving the
community for this visit the religious saw him looking for a lock for one
of his bags, and asked why he was so very particular all at once. "Why,
don't you know," said he, "that the servant at the big house will open it,
in order to put my shaving tackle, brush, and so forth, in their proper
places? and I should not like to have a general stare at my beads, sandals,
and habit." But fashions had changed at Althorp. When the company who had
been invited, especially in his honor, went to dress for dinner, Father
Ignatius remarked to the countess that his full dress would perhaps, not be
quite in place at the table. "On the contrary," she answered,
good-humoredly, "all his old friends would be delighted to see a specimen
of the fashions he had adopted since his old days of whist and repartee in
the same hall." The volunteers were entertained by the earl during his
uncle's visit. The passionist appeared in full costume, and sat next Lord
Spencer, whom nothing would satisfy but a speech from the old man's lips. A
very patriotic speech it was too, and greeted by a cheer that gave pleasure
to both uncle and nephew.

And so one of the crosses of his life was gently removed, leaving many
others, however, to be endured. For a heart so tender, a conscience so
sensitive, a temperament so vivid and excitable as his, the world had many
trials. His simplicity was mistaken for egotism; his zeal looked to many
persons like unbridled impetuosity; his broad sympathies again seemed like
indifferentism, and even calumny dared to attack his spotless character.

All this he bore very patiently, but the suffering was often acute. A deep
abstraction of manner would come over him at such times, making him quite
unconscious of his own actions and of the impression they made upon those
around him. One day when he was going through the streets of Rome with a
brother religious, they passed a fountain. "He went over and put his hand
so far into one of the jets that he squirted the water over a number of
poor persons who were basking in in the sun a few steps beneath him. They
made a stir, and uttered a few oaths as the water kept dashing down on
them. The companion awoke Father Ignatius out of his reverie, and so
unconscious did he seem of the disturbance he had unwittingly created, that
he passed on without alluding to it."

But whoever might blame Father Ignatius for his projects and his peculiar
pertinacity in carrying them into execution, one consoler never failed him.
The Holy Father was ever ready to speak with him of the conversion of
England, merely requesting him to endeavor to interest persons to pray also
for all those separated from the faith in all countries. His Holiness has
granted an indulgence of three hundred days to any one who shall say a
devout prayer for the conversion of England. The preaching of Father
Ignatius was peculiar to himself; he could not be said to possess the gifts
of human eloquence in the highest degree, but there was something like
inspiration in his most commonplace discourse.
{187}
He put the point of his sermon clearly before his audience, and he proved
it most admirably. His acquaintance with the Scriptures was something
marvellous; not only could he quote texts in support of doctrines, but be
applied the facts of the sacred volume in such a happy why, with such a
flood of new ideas, that one would imagine he lived in the midst of them,
or had been told by the sacred writers what they were intended for. Besides
this, he brought a fund of illustrations to carry conviction through the
mind. His illustrations were taken from every phase of life and every kind
of employment; persons listening to him always found the peculiar gist of
his discourse carried into their very homestead; nay, the objections they
themselves were prepared to advance against it were answered before they
could have been thought out. To add to this, there was an earnestness in
his manner that made you see his whole soul, as it were, bent upon your
spiritual good. His holiness of life, which report published before
him--and one look was enough to convince you of its being true--compelled
you to set a value on what he said far above the dicta of ordinary priests.

His style was formed on the gospel. He loved the parables and the similes
of our Lord, and rightly judged that the style of his divine Master was the
most worthy of imitation. So far as the matter of his discourses was
concerned, he was inimitable; his manner was peculiar to himself, deeply
earnest and touching. He abstained from the rousing, thundering style, and
his attempts that way to suit the taste and thus work upon the convictions
of certain congregations, showed him that his forte did not lie there. The
consequence was, that when the words of what he jocosely termed a "crack"
preacher would die with the sound of his own voice or the exclamations of
the multitude, Father Ignatius's words lived with their lives, and helped
them to bear trials that came thirty years after they had heard him. Toward
the end of his life he became rather tiresome to those who knew not his
spirit; but it was the tiresomeness of St. John the Evangelist. We are told
that "the disciple whom Jesus loved" used to be carried in his old age
before the people, and that his only sermon was "My little children, love
one another." He preached no more and no less, but kept perpetually
repeating these few words. Father Ignatius, in like manner, was continually
repeating "the conversion of England." No matter what the subject of his
sermon was he brought this in. He told us often that it became a second
nature with him; that he could not quit thinking or speaking of it even if
he tried, and believed he could speak for ten days consecutively on the
conversion of England without having to repeat an idea.

"He got on very well in the missions: he took all the different parts as
they were assigned him; but he was more successful in the lectures than in
the great sermons of the evening. His confessional was always besieged with
penitents, and he never spared himself."

His last mission was given in the beautiful little church of St. Patrick,
Coatbridge (eight miles from Glasgow). Crowds came to hear the saintly old
father plead for the conversion of England and the sanctification of
Ireland. The first two days he heard confessions from six A.M. to eleven
P.M., excepting the time needed for devotions and meals. On the third day
he remained in the confessional until after midnight. When he came into the
house, his host said: "I am afraid, Father Ignatius, you are overexerting
yourself, and that you must feel tired and fatigued:' "No, no," he answered
with a smile, "I am not fatigued. There is no use in saying I am tired,
for, you know, I must be at the same work to-night in Leith." He was in the
confessional again at six o'clock in the morning, said mass at seven;
breakfasted at half-past eight, and left Coatbridge about nine o'clock.
{188}
Father O'Keefe remarked to him that he looked much better and younger in
secular dress than in his habit. This made him laugh heartily. "When Father
Thomas Doyle," he replied, "saw me in secular dress, he said, 'Father
Ignatius, you look like a broken-down old gentleman.'" And the frankness of
the observation seemed to amuse him immensely.

The rest is easily told. He reached Carstairs Junction at half-past ten,
and, leaving his luggage with the station-master, walked toward Carstairs
House, the residence of his friend and godson, Mr. Monteith. Half a mile
from the entrance to the estate, the long avenue is crossed at right angles
by a second, which leads to the grand entrance of the house. Father
Ignatius had just passed the "rectangle," when he turned off into a
by-path. Then seeing he had lost his way, he asked a child which was the
right road. He never spoke to mortal again. On a little corner in the
avenue, just within sight of the house, and about a hundred paces from the
door, he fell suddenly and yielded up his spirit into the hands of his
Creator. May we all die doing God's work, and as well prepared as Father
Ignatius of St. Paul! "It was God's will that angels instead of men should
surround his lonely bed of death." It was simply by an after-thought that
he had gone to Carstairs House to pass the time between the arrival and
departure of two trains, and thus died at the threshold of an old friend's
door, instead of in the station.

Very tenderly did Mr. Monteith receive the weary burden that the grand old
missionary laid down at his gates. The remains lay in religious state at
Carstairs House for the greater part of three days. Fathers came from
various retreats to look once more upon his beloved face, never so noble as
in its last repose; and looked with silent wonder on all that now remained
of one whom the world was not worthy of possessing longer. Everyone, on
hearing of his death, appeared to have lost a special friend; no one could
lament, for they felt that he was happy; few could pray for him, because
they were more inclined to ask his intercession. The greatest respect and
attention were shown by the railway officials all along the route, and
special ordinances were made in deference to the respected burden that was
carried.

Lord Spencer's letter with regard to his uncle's death is so pleasing that
we transcribe it entire. He was in Denmark, and could not reach England for
the obsequies:

     Denmark, Oct. 16th, 1864
  Rev. Sir: I was much shocked to hear of the death of my excellent Uncle
  George. I received the sad intelligence last Sunday, and subsequently
  received the letter which you had the goodness to write to me. My absence
  from England prevented my doing what I should have wished to have done,
  to have attended to the grave the remains of my uncle, if it had been so
  permitted by your order.

  I assure you that, much as I may have differed from my uncle on points of
  doctrine, no one could have admired more than I did the beautiful
  simplicity, earnest religion, and faith of my uncle. For his God he
  renounced all the pleasures of the world; his death, sad as it is to us,
  was, as his life, apart from the world, but with God.

  His family will respect his memory as much as I am sure you and the
  brethren of his order do.

  I should be much obliged to you if you let me know the particulars of the
  last days of his life, and also where he is buried, as I should like to
  place them among family records at Althorp.

  I venture to trouble you with these questions, as I suppose you will be
  able to furnish them better than anyone else.

    Yours faithfully,
      Spencer.

Thus in the end did Father Ignatius, in the simple pursuance of his duties,
pierce through the prejudices of caste and tradition, harder to penetrate
in England than elsewhere.

Mr. Monteith has erected a cross on the corner of the avenue where his
saintly friend fell. It bears this inscription:

  "On this spot the Hon. and Rev. GEORGE SPENCER,
    in religion, Father Ignatius of St. Paul,
      Passionist, while in the midst of his labors
        for the salvation or souls, and the
          restoration of his countrymen to the
            unity of the faith, was suddenly
              called by his heavenly Master
                to his eternal home.
                  October 1st, 1864.
                      R. I. P."

--------

{189}

  From Chambers's Journal.

  A Naturalist's Home.


There is no place like England for a rich man to live in exactly as he
pleases. It is the appropriate exercising-ground for the hobbies of all
mankind. You may join an Agapemone, or you may live alone in dirt and
squalor, and call yourself a hermit. The whim of the late Charles Waterton,
naturalist, was a very innocent one, namely, to make his home a city of
refuge for all persecuted birds--a sanctuary inviolate from net and snare
and gun; and he effected his humane purpose. An intimate associate and
fervent admirer of his, one Dr. Richard Hobson, has given to the world
[Footnote 44] an account of this ornithological asylum; and it is certainly
very curious. The name of the place was Walton Hall, near Wakefield; and it
seems to have been peculiarly well adapted for the purpose to which it was
put. It was situated on an island, approachable only by an iron
foot-bridge, and having no other dwellings in its immediate neighborhood.
The lake in which it stood gave the means of harboring waterfowl of all
kinds, while the "packing" of carrion crows in the park exhibits a proof of
the protection afforded by even the mainland portion of the estate; it was
sufficiently extensive to allow of portions being devoted to absolute
seclusion, for those birds which are naturally disposed to avoid the haunts
of man. "Two thirds of the lake, with its adjacent wood and pasture land,
were kept free from all intrusion whatever for six successive months every
year; even visitors at the house, of whatever rank, being 'warned off'
those portions set apart for natural history purposes. Even the marsh
occupied by the herons was forbidden ground throughout the whole
breeding-season, unless in case of accident to a young heron by falling
from its nest; in which case aid was afforded with all the promptitude
exhibited by the fire escape conductors for the safety of human life."

    [Footnote 44: Charles Waterton: his Home, Habits, and Handiwork. By
    Richard Hobson, M.D.]

The surroundings of the mansion itself were quaint and exceptional,
exhibiting the eccentric character of their proprietor. Item, a magnificent
sundial--constructed, however, by a common mason in the
neighborhood--composed of twenty equilateral triangles, so disposed as to
form a similar number of individual dials, ten of which, whenever the sun
shone, and whatever its altitude, were faithful timekeepers. On these dials
were engraved the names of cities in all parts of the globe, placed in
accordance with their different degrees of longitude, so that the solar
time of each could be simultaneously ascertained. Near this sundial was a
subterraneous passage leading to two boat-houses, entirely concealed under
the island, furnished with arched roofs lined with zinc-plate, and
arrangements for slinging the boats out of water when they required
painting or repair. Four sycamores, with roosting branches for peahens, and
a fifth, whose decayed trunk was always occupied by jackdaws, screened the
house from the north winds. Close to the cast-iron-bridge entrance was a
ruin, on the top of whose gable, at the foot of a stone-cross, twenty-four
feet above the lake, a wild duck built her nest, and hatched her young for
years. A great yew-fence enclosed this ruin on one side, so that within its
barrier birds might find a secure place for building their nests and
incubation.
{190}
For the special encouragement and protection of the starling and the
jackdaw, there was erected within this fence a thirteen feet high
stone-and-mortar-built tower, pierced with about sixty resting-berths. To
each berth there was an aperture of about five inches square. A few, near
the top, were set apart for the jackdaw and the white owl. The remaining
number were each supplied at the entrance with a square loose stone, having
one of its inferior angles cut away, so that the starling could enter, but
the jackdaw and owl were excluded. The landlord of these convenient
tenements only reserved to himself the privilege of inspection, which he
could always effect by removing the loose stone.

The lake had an artificial underground sluice, which issuing out at a
little distance into sight, furnished the means of cultivating a knowledge
of the mysterious habits of the water-rat; this stream then passed through
one of the loveliest grottoes in England. Near this place were two
pheasantries, the central portion of each consisting of a clump of
yew-trees, while the whole mass was surrounded by an impenetrable holly
fence; the stable-yard was not far off; and hence the squire had infinite
opportunities of establishing the important fact, as he considered it, that
the game-cock always claps his wings and crows, whereas the cock-pheasant
always crows and claps his wings. Mr. Waterton's interest in natural
history was, however, by no means confined to the animal creation. He
concerned himself greatly with the culture of trees (though by no means of
land), and hailed any _lusus naturae_ that occurred in his grounds as
other men welcomed the birth of a son and heir. Walton Hall had at one time
its own corn-mill, and when that inconvenient necessity no longer existed,
the mill-stone was laid by in an orchard and forgotten. The diameter of
this circular stone measured five feet and a half, while its depth averaged
seven inches throughout; its central hole had a diameter of eleven inches.
By mere accident, some bird or squirrel had dropped the fruit of the
filbert tree through this hole on to the earth, and in 1812 the seedling
was seen rising up through that unwonted channel. As its trunk gradually
grew through this aperture and increased, its power to raise the ponderous
mass of stone was speculated upon by many. Would the filbert tree die in
the attempt? Would it burst the millstone? Or would it lift it? In the end,
the little filbert tree lifted the millstone, and in 1868 wore it like a
crinoline about its trunk, and Mr. Waterton used to sit upon it under the
branching shade. This extraordinary combination it was the great
naturalist's humor to liken to John Bull and the national debt.

In no tree-fancier's grounds was there ever one tenth of the hollow trunks
which were to be found at Walton Hall; the fact being that the owner
encouraged and fostered decay for the purposes of his birds' paradise.
These trees were protected by artificial roofs in order to keep their
hollows dry, and fitted thus for the reception of any feathered couple
inclined to marry and settle. Holes were also pierced in the stems, to
afford ingress and egress; and one really would scarcely be surprised if
they had been furnished with bells for "servants" and "visitors." In an ash
tree trunk thus artificially prepared, and set apart for owls (the squire's
favorite bird), an ox-eyed titmouse took the liberty of nesting, hatching,
and maturing her young. Mr. Waterton attached a door, hung on hinges, to
exactly fit the opening in the trunk, having a hole in its inferior portion
for the passage of the titmouse. The squire would daily visit the his
little tenant, and opening the door delicately draw his hand over the back
of the sitting bird, as though to assure it of his protection. But
unfortunately, after the bird had flown, one year, a squirrel took
possession of this eligible tenement, and although every vestige of the
lining of its nest was carefully removed, no titmouse or any other bird
ever occupied it again.

{191}

In May, 1862, the squire pointed out to the author no less than three
birds' nests in one cavity--a jackdaw's with five eggs; a barn-owl's with
three young ones, close to which lay several dead mice and a half grown
rat, as in a larder; and, eighteen inches above the owl's nest, a
redstart's, containing six eggs! Our author deduces from this circumstance,
that in an unreclaimed state birds, although of different species, are not
disposed to quarrel; and the fact that near this "happy family" a pair of
water-hens hatched their eggs in a perfectly exposed nest, under the very
eyes of two carrion crows who occupied the first floor of the same tree--an
alder--without the least molestation, seems to confirm this view.

In this Garden of Eden, however, all sorts of anomalous things seem to have
been done by birds. In a cleft branch of a fir tree, twenty-four feet from
the ground, a peahen built her nest, through which piece of ambition, since
falling is much easier to learn than flying, she lost all her young ones.
In the branch of an oak, twelve feet from the ground, a wild-duck nested
and brought down all her brood in safety to their natural element. A pair
of coots built their nest on the extreme end of a willow-branch closely
overhanging the water; but the weight of the materials, and especially of
the birds themselves, depressed it so that their habitation rested on the
very surface of the water, and its contents rose and fell with every
ripple; and, finally, another pair of coots, who had built their house upon
what they considered _terra firma_, found themselves altogether adrift
one stormy morning, and continued so, veering with the fickle breeze for
many days, until at last the eggs were hatched, and their young family
became independent, and could shift for themselves. All these minutiae were
carefully watched by the squire. An excellent telescope enabled him to
perceive from his drawing-room window the manoeuvres of both land and water
fowls. "You could carefully scrutinize their form, their color, their
plumage, the color of their legs, the precise form and hue of their
mandibles, and not unfrequently even the color of the iris of the eye: also
their mode of walking, of swimming, and of resting. You could distinctly
ascertain the various kinds of food on which they lived and fed their
young. .... You could see the herons, the water-hens, the coots, the
Egyptian and the Canada geese, the carrion crows, the ringdoves
(occasionally on their nests), the wild-duck, teal, and widgeon." No less
than eighty-nine descriptions of land-bird and thirty of water-fowl
sojourned in the grounds or about the lake of Walton Hall. In winter, when
the lake was frozen, it was literally a fact that the ice could sometimes
not be discerned, it was so crowded by the thousands of water-fowl that
huddled together upon it without sound or motion.

Mr. Waterton, it may be easily imagined, was himself no sportsman; but it
was his custom to supply his own table on a fast-day (he was a Roman
Catholic) with fish shot by himself with a bow and arrow. Otherwise, he
made war on no living creature, except the rat: the "Hanoverian" rat, as he
designated him with bitterness: and even him he preferred to exile rather
than destroy. But having caught a fine specimen of the "Hanoverian" in a
"harmless trap," he carefully smeared him over with tar, and let him
depart. This astonished and highly scented animal immediately scoured all
the rat-passages, and thus impregnated them with the odor of all others
most offensive to his brethren, who fled by hundreds in the night across
the narrow portion of the lake, and were no more seen. The squire was
indeed a most tolerant and tender-hearted man. He built a shelter upon a
certain part of the lake expressly for poor folks, who were permitted to
fish whether for purposes of sale or for their own dinners; and
notwithstanding that it was his custom to dress like a miser and a
scarecrow, and to live like an ascetic--sleeping upon bare boards with a
hollowed piece of wood for a pillow, and fasting much longer than was good
for him--he was very charitable and open-handed to others.

{192}

It must be confessed, however, we gather from this volume that the great
naturalist was, out of his profession, by no means a wise man, and
certainly not a witty one. He loved jokes of a schoolboy sort, and indulged
in sarcasms more practical than theoretical. The two knockers of his
front-door were cast, from bell-metal, in the similitude of human faces,
the one representing mirth, and the other misery. The former was immovably
fixed to the door, and seemed to grin with delight at your fruitless
efforts to raise it; the latter appeared to suffer agonies from the blows
you inflicted on it. In the vestibule was a singularly conceived model of a
nightmare, with a human face, grinning and showing the tusks of a wild
boar, the hands of a man, Satanic horns, elephant's ears, bat's wings, one
cloven foot, one eagle's talon, and with the tail of a serpent; beneath it
was the following motto:

    "Assidens praecordiis
  Pavore soinnos auferam." [Footnote 45]

    [Footnote 45: Sitting on the region of the heart,
    I take away sleep by fear.]

It was his humor, more than once, when between seventy and eighty years of
age, to welcome the author, when he came to dinner, by hiding on all-fours
under the hall-table, and pretending to be a doll. He made use of his
wonderful taxidermic talents to represent many individuals who took a
leading part in the Reformation by loathsome objects from the animal and
vegetable creation, and completed the artistic group with a sprinkling of
"composite" demons. He was seriously vexed at a stranger under his own
roof, who had profanely designated his favorite (stuffed) Bahia toad as "an
ugly brute." These and similar instances of bad taste we think Dr. Hobson
might have left unrecorded with advantage. Still, there was much to like as
well as to admire about the great naturalist. He could show good taste as
well as bad. No museum of natural history elsewhere could compare with the
beauty and finish of the specimens, prepared by the squire's own hand with
wonderful skill and patience, which adorned the inside of Walton Hall. "Not
even _living_ nature," says our author, "could surpass the
representations there displayed." In attitude, you had life itself; in
plumage, the lustrous beauty that death could not dim; "in anatomy, every
local prominence, every depression, every curve, nay, the slightest
elevation or depression of each feather." The great staircase glowed with
tropic splendor. At the top of it was the veritable cayman mentioned in the
Wanderings, on which the squire mounted in Essequibo, and a huge snake with
which he contended in single combat. Doubts have been thrown on both these
feats, but Dr. Hobson relates instances of presence of mind and courage
shown by the squire in his own presence quite as marvellous as these.
Wishing to make experiment as to whether his Woorali poison, obtained in
1812 from the Macoushi Indians, was more efficacious than the bite of the
rattlesnake, he got an American showman to bring him twenty-four of these
dangerous reptiles, and took them out of their cases, one by one, with his
own hand, while the Yankee fled from the room in terror, accompanied by
very many members of the faculty, who had assembled to witness the
operation. In his old age, he alone could be found to enter the cage of the
Borneo orangoutang at the Zoological Gardens, in order minutely to inspect
the palm of its hand during life, and also the teeth. It was with
difficulty he obtained permission to run this hazard, the keepers insisting
upon it that the beast would "make very short work of him." However,
nothing daunted, the squire entered the palisaded enclosure.
{193}
"The meeting of these two celebrities was clearly a case of love at first
sight, as the strangers embraced most affectionately, kissing one another
many times, to the great amusement of the spectators. The squire's
investigations were freely permitted, and his fingers allowed to enter his
jaws; his apeship then claimed a similar privilege, which was as
courteously granted; after which the orang-outang began an elaborate
_search_ of the squire's head."

The strength and activity of Waterton were equal to his physical courage,
notwithstanding that he was wont to indulge in venesection to a dangerous
extent, always performing that operation himself, even to the subsequent
bandaging. At eighty-one, the suppleness of his limbs was marvellous; and
at seventy-seven years of age our author was witness to his scratching the
back part of his head with the toe of his right foot! Death, however,
claimed his rights at last in the squire's eighty-third year.

Charles Waterton lies buried in a secluded part of his own beautiful
domain, at the foot of a little cross, with this inscription, written by
himself:

         Orate
  Pro anima Caroll Waterton,
        Viatoris:
     Cujus jam fessa
    Juxta hanc crucem
   Hic sepelluntur ossa.

Even those iron limbs of his, it seems, grew weary at last.


------

    Original.


    My Tears in Sleep.


 "And He said: Weep not; the maid is not dead, but sleepeth."


    "Whence come these tears upon thy face?
  What sorrow craved these scalding drops of woe
        In peaceful sleep?
    Didst dream of pain or dire disgrace?
  Sob not so bitterly. I fain would know
        What made thee weep!"

    "Not for the woes which life may bring--
  The life, in sooth, that doth just now begin--
        These tears were shed.
    But memory hath a bitter sting,
  And dreaming bade me mourn the time of sin
        When I was dead."

--------

{194}


    Translated from the French.

    Robert; or, The Influence of a Good Mother.

    Chapter X.


  "O Rome, Mistress of the world,
  red with the blood or martyrs,
  white with the innocence of virgins,
  we salute and bless thee in all ages, and forever."


The first real stopping-place Robert made under the cloudless sky of Italy
was at Milan, and its magnificent cathedral was the first place visited.
This church, after St. Peter's at Rome, is the finest in Italy, and is
built of pure white marble. There are few Gothic edifices so rich in
ornament, or of so light and airy an appearance. His next visit was to one
of the old Dominican convents, named Sainte Marie des Graces, where he saw
"The Last Supper" of Leonardo da Vinci, one of the great Italian painters
and the _protégé_ of François I.

The ancient capital of Lombardy does not present a very agreeable
appearance, notwithstanding its numerous palaces, which is owing to the
arrangement of the streets, which are so long and narrow that nothing shows
its real magnificence, not even the cathedral. The memory of Eugene
Beauharnais is always dear here, where as the delegate of Napoleon he
exercised sovereign power, and Robert saw with pleasure that the glory and
benefits of the one and the wise conduct of the other were not effaced from
the hearts of the Milanese. From Milan he went to Parma, where he saw a
number of choice paintings by Correggio, Lanfranc, and Mazzola, and at the
cathedral the magnificent fresco of the Assumption; at the church of Saint
Sepulchre, the Madonna and Child. He also visited the Farnese gallery, and
the tomb of this family in the church of the Madonna Steceata. From Parma
he went to Genoa, surnamed the superb. This rich city is the rival of
Venice, and is proud of her antiquities, and the power she has always held
on the seas. She has almost entire the schools of Michael Angelo and
Bernini, and has a prodigious number of paintings and sculptures. Thus was
Robert obliged at each step to stop and pay his tribute of admiration to
what be saw. And Genoa has produced so many distinguished artists that for
a long time science and art have flourished there and acquired a high
degree of renown. Robert passed three months of study there, which was
longer than he intended, as he was burning with a desire to get to Rome,
for it was there that he intended seriously to open his studies, but he
could not resist the charm which held him in first one, then another place.
From Genoa he sailed for Leghorn, and from there to Florence, which all
travellers unite in considering one of the most beautiful of Italian
cities. It is situated at the foot of the Apennines, and the number of its
gardens and their beauty, its public squares, ornamented with fountains and
statues, the shores of the Arno, with their charming quays, and the
grandeur of the palaces, designed and embellished by Sanzio and Buonarroti,
its smiling suburbs, and the brilliant titles of its citizens, combine to
make it a most attractive place. Its largest gallery was commenced by
Cardinal Leopold de Medicis, and is built in two parallel galleries, and at
their end a third is placed, which stands on the right bank of the Arno.
Here are classed in perfect order the master works of modern art.
{195}
If the name of Medicis has odious remembrances in France since the massacre
of Saint Bartholomew, it is not so in Florence or any part of Italy; on the
contrary, it recalls there all that is most dazzling and generous in
literature, art, and science. Talent always finds an asylum and a welcome
in Florence, and Robert was favorably received by the persons to whom he
had been recommended by his master, who, more for his genuine affection for
him than for the honor of having such a pupil, had given him letters to men
of high positions. What could be a more powerful stimulant for him than the
flattering encouragement he received from persons of known taste and hearty
appreciation? Believing that nothing that we wish to accomplish is
impossible, Robert, with increased passion for his art, studied the old
masters with determined energy, though never daring to hope he could
approach their perfection. Mediocrity is always vain and boastful, while
true merit is modest and mistrustful, and this was why Robert was ignorant
of his wonderful talent. He left Florence with many regrets both as a man
and an artist, but Rome was the crowning glory of his ambition, and he must
go on. In passing through the gates of the sacred city be felt an emotion
that it would be impossible to express; for the soul of the artist and the
Christian were equally moved, and in his enthusiasm he cried with Tasso:
"It is not to thy proud columns, thy arches of triumph, or thy baths, that
I come to render homage; it is to the blood of martyrs shed for Christ on
this consecrated ground!" At last he was really in Rome, whose walls
enclose so many scattered leaves of the history of all nations, and the
very name of which fills us with reverence. On the mutilated fragments here
and there, and on the wrecks of past greatness, the artist deplored the too
short duration of all earthly things, but the Christian reads there a
salutary lesson which told of the early and of worldly joys. In this grand
old city he settled himself and commenced to work, giving himself up with
ardor to composition as the highest and truest art. In the beginning his
ideas were not truly expressed, but still his pictures were full of talent.
He preferred working at home and did not often go to the academy, but was
aided in his studies by the advice of artists and connoisseurs. After a few
years he composed works of wonderful power, and his genius seemed to take
every turn; sometimes his conceptions were noble and sublime, then, again,
delicate and tender, every passion being rendered with fidelity. As he
became conscious of his rapid progress, the more his desire to find his
father tormented him. It was not a sentiment of pride, still less of
vengence, that made him wish it; it was the need he felt of a heart that
responded to his own. It was the voice of nature crying unto him, "Thou
hast a father; he lives, and thou dost not know him; search for him, and
throw at his feet thy love and talent; speak to him of thy mother! See the
task which is thine, now that thou art worthy of the name thou bearest."
The young painter was admitted into many distinguished houses, and learned
of his father, but could obtain no information which would put him on his
track; yet he buoyed himself up with the uncertain hope that he might meet
him in this city of repose and resignation. It is a place of sweet sojourn
for those whose fortunes are cast down, and a dear asylum for troubled
souls, the end of the artist's pilgrimage as well as that of the invalid,
the tourist, and the savant. There all misfortunes are respected and all
sufferings are consoled; and it is possible that the Count de Verceuil had
been overtaken by some of the sorrows from which no one in this world is
exempt; and surely he could not flatter himself that he would pass through
life without the chastisement that falls on the heads of the guilty! God's
patience is long-suffering, but sometimes his anger falls with a sudden
blow on the hardened sinner, and makes him cry for pardon.
{196}
The impressions made upon Robert in this city of majestic ruins and antique
monuments, and where the arts speak so noble a language, could not be other
than exalted and religious. Before so many wrecks the soul is predisposed
to pity all things here below; the projects we nourish appear so puerile,
we conceive another glory and adore God and his imperishable glory. Faith
gives to man a moment of calm in every trial, and opens to him the doors of
a blissful eternity. These stones cry aloud to all, "Passing away!" but it
is in a consoling and solemn accent, and brings down all our pity upon the
worldlings who have forgotten Jesus our divine Master, who said, "Heaven
and earth may pass away, but my words will never pass away." With the
exactitude with which he always fulfilled his promises, he knew that the
time for his return to France was drawing near, and that there were two
persons there who counted with sorrow the days which were passed far from
him. He was not ignorant of the fact that time hung heavily upon these poor
old people, and that it was difficult for them to support the long hours.
The remembrance of these friends followed him everywhere; they were near
him in his excursions through Rome, at the Colosseum, at the Capitol; day
and night he found them in his thoughts and his heart, and knew that they
were impatient for his return, and would amply repay him for the regrets he
would leave behind; and as he wished to visit Venice and remain there some
time, he bade farewell to the ancient city of the Senate of the Caesars,
now the residence of the Pope and the seat of the church militant. From
there he goes to Venice, the queen of the Adriatic. From a distance,
resting tranquilly on the surface of the sea, it resembles a number of
vessels with countless masts, but on a nearer approach the charm is broken,
and it stands boldly above the waves, revealing its wonderful beauty to the
astonished eye of the traveller. Formed of more than sixty small islands,
Venice is interspersed with canals without number, the largest of which is
in the form of an S, and divides the city into two nearly equal parts.
Everything in it has an original character, and silence reigns supreme over
the city; no vehicles, and no pavements for them to rattle on, and the
population, not being an industrious or commercial people, have nothing to
make a noise at. But the great charm to Robert was in the magnificent
palaces, nearly all of which were built by the great artists of Italy; and
the churches, rich in pictures, frescoes, statues, and bas-reliefs,
together with marble columns of rare workmanship. Before commencing his
studies he visited the principal buildings, the church of St. Mark, on the
front of which are four bronze horses, attributed to the celebrated
sculptor Lysippus; then to the ancient palace of the doge, and to see the
subterranean vaults, which are separated from the palace by the Bridge of
Sighs, and then to the Arsenal, which occupies an island almost a league in
circumference. This edifice is a citadel surrounded by high ramparts, and
guarding its entrance are two colossal antique lions brought from Athens
and Corinth. After seeing the city Robert renewed his favorite occupations,
and, as in Florence and Rome, was inspired by the models in the Venetian
galleries. Milan, Parma, Genoa, Florence, Rome, and Venice he had seen in
turn, and they had each opened to him their treasures and their teachings.
There was not a master the secret of whose genius he had not sought to
discover; there was not one of his works he had not studied in its minutest
details. Thus the object of his journey was attained, and his talent was
ripened under the generous sun of Italy. He could now go home and
consecrate the knowledge he had obtained to the glory of his art. "Only
fourteen days," he said to himself, "before I set out for France." But
_the_ event of the year was coming on, the general confusion of which
inspires the goddess Folly, and makes her ring her bells more noisily.
{197}
It puts every one in a complete vertigo, in which they think of nothing but
giddy pleasure and dancing and feasting. There is not a village which does
not take part in the rejoicings of the carnival, and it was something so
new to Robert, that he could not return to Paris without seeing and taking
part in it, an excusable curiosity in one of his age, and we will follow in
the train of this festive season, which animates everything.


  Chapter XI.

  "What are misfortunes and despair?"


Toward the end of the carnival license has no limit, and each one is
eagerly drinking the cup of pleasure and rushing thoughtlessly into all
kinds of amusements. Yet there is in this _mélange_ of ranks, manners,
and customs something so fantastic and extraordinary that Robert,
unaccustomed to scenes of this kind, is perfectly confounded. He is dragged
on by the popular current, which, in its course, made a thousand circuits,
and carried him along, in spite of his wish to the contrary. He was,
perhaps, the only person who was serious in the midst of all this
nonsense--the only one who did not exchange a phrase or word with
others--the only one who did not reply to the provoking questions put him
by the laughing crowd abandoned to the freest gayety.

As night came on, exhausted with fatigue, be returns to his hotel, and,
hearing cries not far from him, started in the direction from whence they
came. The darkness was profound, and he could scarcely distinguish what
passed him at any distance. But a few moments accustomed him to it, and,
following the cries, he found a woman struggling to release herself from a
man who was trying to drag her toward a gondola he had near. He advanced to
defend her, when a fourth person appeared and struck the man with a
poniard. He staggered and fell, uttering a horrible groan, and as Robert
went to his assistance, the man, and the woman he had avenged, disappeared,
leaving him alone to help their victim. Seeing no one near, he carried the
wounded man to the door of his hotel, and what was his surprise to find it
was Gustave de Vernanges, the son of his loved benefactress. Although he
had nothing but painful remembrances of this young man, he was not the less
sorrowfully affected in seeing the end to which his wickedness had brought
him, nor less prodigal in his care of Gustave. The more he saw that his
soul was exposed to peril, the more he desired to save his body, that both
might at last be saved. But the days of the wicked are numbered, and God
strikes them down. Woe unto them then if they are unprepared for their
doom. Gustave sank rapidly, and the physician's art could not avail. Robert
unceasingly prayed to God to give a few more days to this poor sinner, that
he might be reconciled to his Judge before appearing in his presence. He
wept with anguish when he found the shades of death were fast drawing round
him. A deep-drawn sigh was heard in the room, and the unfortunate young man
opened his eyes and looked round him. A second sigh, then a horrible groan,
and thinking he was not recognized, he articulated in a feeble voice, "Who
are you? Where am I?"

"Be tranquil," replied Robert sweetly, "you are at the house of a friend.
You have been wounded, and, not knowing where you lived, I brought you
here. You must be perfectly calm and quiet, for your wound is dangerous. If
you have any messages to send your friends, I will faithfully execute
them."

"Yes," replied Gustave painfully, "I feel that I am badly wounded, and
will, perhaps, die, and so young too. I have no parents, but had a number
of friends, who shared my pleasures and excited me to do foolish things,
but where are they now? Oh! it is frightful to die when one is rich and has
so much pleasure to look forward to.
{198}
Must I give up all these things, my titles, my wealth, and all, to go--
where? I, the rich Gustave de Vernanges, must I die at twenty-seven, struck
by the hand of a common man?"

"You must not speak so," replied Robert. "In God's hand is the life you so
much regret to give up, and, if he wills it, you will be saved; his power
and goodness are great, but you must submit yourself to his divine will,
and repent in all sincerity of heart. You are not without sin, for we are
all sinners; but ask God's pardon for them, and you will then be tranquil,
and peace of mind is necessary to health of body."

"For what must I repent," said the troubled voice of the unhappy Gustave.
"What have I done? What are my faults? They are only what thousands of
others have done. I have amused myself, and laughed at the sorrows of my
victim. I gave them gold and rejoiced in their tears; passing my years in
feasts and follies, and never trying to dry the tears I caused. Oh!" he
cried in delirium, "I see it now through the mists of death. My mother! oh!
how I treated her! The veil falls from my eyes! Remorse! remorse! I have
sinned, and my mother that I did not love calls me now to repent. O God, my
God, pardon me!" And in his fever and on his bed of sickness and pain he
called upon his mother, whom he had killed by his wickedness, and upon God,
whom be had renounced all his life, to save him.

The physician came in at this moment, and, looking at him, shook his head
sadly, saying to Robert that death was near, and a priest had better be
sent for to prepare him for the last change. He soon arrived, but Gustave
was in a violent delirium, and could not understand his saintly
exhortations.

"Pray the Lord," said the man of God to Robert, "pray that he will give
this unfortunate young man enough consciousness that he may confess and
receive absolution; and may his example, my son, teach you to fly from the
vain pleasures of this world and its impure passions."

Robert then told him of the obligations he was under to the mother of
Gustave, and how well he had known her for two years, and how he had since
been separated from her son.

"And see," replied the man of God, "what would have been his end if God had
not made you an instrument of reconciliation between him and his Maker. He
led you near your enemy just at the moment when death struck the hardened
sinner, to make him repent. The designs of the Almighty are impenetrable,
but in their execution there is grace and pardon. Oh! let us pray, my son,
and God will give both faith and hope, and will regenerate this poor heart,
tortured by remorse."

The venerable priest and the young painter passed several hours in prayer,
and the old man supplicated heaven with fervor for the conversion of one of
his brothers to Christ.

Toward morning Gustave became conscious, and the persuasive and eloquent
words of the priest moved the dying heart. He comprehended his sins, the
greatness of his faults, and wept bitterly for his errors, and repented for
the fatal passions that tempted him to commit so many crimes. He confessed,
with heart-broken repentance, the many griefs he had caused his mother, and
the name of Robert was spoken with hers, and his regrets at the sorrows he
had given him. But when he commenced to avow all his follies of debauchery
and infamous seductions, vanquished by shame, and the frightful remembrance
of the hateful past, he cried out: "O God, do not pardon me, I am too
guilty!"

"What do you say, my son?" said the priest? "You are guilty, it is true,
but have confidence in God, and you will be pardoned. He has struck you
down, to draw you more truly to himself."

{199}

Gustave listened attentively, and was much moved at the goodness of a God
justly irritated against him, and he felt the deepest sorrow at having been
for so long an offender against his word; but his soul, full of the most
bitter vices and most detestable wickedness, is now baptized in the waters
of repentance. The body dies, but the soul lives; the Lord has ratified in
heaven the absolution that his minister pronounced on earth. Gustave's
strength was fast failing, and he felt that he was dying. The recognition
between Robert and himself was touching, and the priest wept with joy and
regret, blessing the one who was to leave life, and also the one who
remained, to practise on earth every Christian virtue.

"Do not let me die alone, kind father," said Gustave to the priest. "I have
lived so badly that I have need of your pious assistance to finish life
more worthily."

The end was almost come. The physician could not retract his fatal
sentence, nor give any hope, for the wound was mortal. The blade of the
poniard had penetrated near the heart, and it was a miracle that he had
survived so long. He heard his sentence pronounced with resignation, and
accepted death as a just expiation for his sins, praying God to make it
such. He suffered some days longer, testifying by his patience and his
pious prayers the sincerity of his repentance, expiring with sentiments of
burning contrition and sorrow for his sins on his lips. Robert was grieved
to lose him so soon after his conversion and his return to virtue; and his
sad and premature end was a grave warning of the result of worldly passions
and giving way to vice, though Robert hardly needed such an example, his
chaste and pure soul had always turned with horror and aversion from the
licentiousness which beats the imagination and sullies its purity. Yet he
was always on his guard, for be knew the feebleness of human nature and the
dangers to which it is exposed, and the more he avoided the corrupting
vices of the world, the better could he resist them, for no one is so brave
in danger but that he may perish; and Gustave's death convinced him that
Christianity is the only basis on which we can build immortal happiness, to
which we all look forward after terrestrial joys lose their power of
satisfying the desire for happiness which agitates man from the cradle to
the grave, and which makes him attach such glorious hopes to religion, the
only vessel that is never wrecked and that takes us safely to the eternal
kingdom of perfect peace.

After having rendered the last sad duties to the unfortunate Gustave,
Robert left Venice, but with very different feelings from those be promised
himself. He traversed rapidly the Venetian Lombardy kingdom, then Piedmont,
and, stopping some days at Turin, went on to Susa at the foot of Mont
Cenis. There were two other travellers crossing this mountain at the same
time, a man of about sixty years of age, and a young woman, either his wife
or daughter. Their carriage followed them at some distance, but from either
fear or curiosity they preferred going on foot or on a mule. Robert had
bowed respectfully and exchanged a few polite salutations with them, but
after that all effort to renew the conversation had been in vain, and he
had renounced the hope of making any further acquaintance with the
stranger, whose face of manly and severe beauty, though expressive of much
mental suffering, had not escaped the eye of the artist, habitually
accustomed to read all the emotions on the face. His sad countenance moved
Robert so much that he turned round several times, not simply from
compassion, but from a sentiment of irresistible and strange interest.

A mysterious and sympathetic influence was felt by the two others, who had
certainly never seen him before; for the gentleman followed him with a
pleasure for which he could not account, and watched his light and easy
step, urging his mule on to keep near him, when the animal gives a sudden
spring and throws him into a deep ravine.

{200}

  Chapter XII.

  "Extend to them the hand of pardon:
  They have sinned, but heaven forgives!"
      Lamartine.


Our young hero, wishing to have a view from the highest point of the
mountain, was pushing on to reach the spot from where he thought it would
be most extensive. When he had almost attained it, his foot slipped and for
a moment he lost his balance, and it was this appearance of danger that
kept the other traveller watching him, and led to his fall. But Robert was
light and active, and raised himself by holding on to the rugged sides of
the mountain and getting on a kind of plateau, when the cries, first of the
man, then the lady, and then the guide attracted his attention and made him
turn quickly. Then at great risk he leaned almost his whole body over the
side of the precipice, and saw that imminent and terrible death menaced the
man for whom his heart had conceived so much affection. The lady and the
guide were both afraid to descend, for there was nothing to hold on to but
some loose stones projecting out of the earth. The gentleman's position is
both critical and perilous, but Robert descends cautiously to his side and
assists him to climb up; and indeed it is almost a miracle that he is
saved; and with a face radiant with joy Robert receives the thanks of the
lady and the traveller, who, remarking a medallion Robert always wore, and
of which he had obtained glimpses in the vivacity of his movements, said to
him, in a trembling voice: "Where did you get that medallion, speak
quickly!" And as if the reply he would receive was a sentence of life and
death, he waited in horrible anxiety, as if his soul was suspended on the
lips of Robert. Though surprised at this question, he was too polite not to
answer without hesitation when he saw the agitation of the stranger. "This
portrait," said he, "comes from my mother; it represents--" "Oh!
pardon--the name of your mother?" eagerly interrupted the stranger.
"Stephanie Dormeuil." "But what was her other name?" Robert hesitated a
moment, then replied, "She was called Madame de Verceuil." At this answer a
dazzling fire burned in the eyes of the stranger, and he made such a quick,
impetuous movement that the cord which held the medallion was broken, and
it fell to the ground. Robert stooped to pick it up, and heard these words,
which overwhelmed him with astonishment: "O my God, the remorse I have
suffered for twenty-five years!" and fainted, but the care of the lady and
Robert soon brought back consciousness, and when he opened his eyes be
caught Robert in his arms, and cried, "Oh! thou art my son, my own Robert!
and I am thy father. Wilt thou pardon me, my son, my dear child, wilt thou
pardon me?" "What! you are my father!" cried the artist, delirious with
joy. "If you are, I must press you to my heart, which has so long called
for you and needed you. I curse you?--for what? My saintly mother did not
teach me this, but the contrary. O my God!" he said on bended knee, "you
have fulfilled my prayers, you have given me my father." It is in vain that
we can find words to express this touching scene. Robert was folded in his
father's arms, repeating in a tender voice, "My father, my father!" He
covered him with caresses and kisses, and calls his name with a joy so
expressive, and a love so profound, that the count wept bitterly, and
cried, raising his eyes to heaven, "O Stephanie, what noble vengeance thou
hast given me!" Then gazing on his son, he was filled with pride at seeing
the child whom he had lost when an infant, and found when a young man of
splendid genius and glorious intellect. He said to him, with some
embarrassment but with a lively interest, "My son, where is thy mother?
What does she now?"

{201}

"Alas!" said Robert, pointing to heaven, "she is there! She sees us, and
her noble soul rejoices in our happiness."

The count understood it, his head was cast down, overwhelmed by the
bitterness of his remembrances and his remorse. Robert had seized his hand
and was pressing it affectionately, when he took the young woman and
presented her to Robert, saying: "This is thy cousin, Julia de Moranges,
who has been to me the best and most indulgent of nieces. I know you will
love each other." They shook hands with frank cordiality, but here both
filled with emotion at this strange meeting, and as this was not a
favorable place for more extended explanations, and the guides were already
impatient of so long a delay, they concluded to go on, and God knows the
most tender sentiments filled Robert's mind. Filial love had ever been his
first and strongest sentiment, and it burned in his heart with a passionate
energy that charmed the count, and made him stop each moment to embrace his
son, who had been the constant object of his regrets, for whom he had wept
so much, and whose loss was the cause of the sorrow which had brought on
premature old age.

Arriving at the top of this mountain, which is more than 2000 feet above
the level of the sea, our travellers are on a plateau four leagues in
circumference and covered with green pasture that charms the eyes, and in
the middle of it was a large lake about thirty feet deep, filled with
several varieties of fish.

The count was a man of extensive and varied information, and it was a
pleasure for Robert to hear him talk, so charming and attractive was his
conversation; and questioned by his son, the count related many things
concerning Mont Cenis. "There is a certain celebrity," said he, "attached
to the mountain we are crossing. Some authors pretend that Hannibal crossed
here to enter Italy, and it is certain that Augustus opened a route, that
was enlarged by Charlemagne. Thou hast before thee," added he, "the still
more recent traces of the work that Napoleon commenced, and which is truly
worthy of the great man who brought it thus far to perfection." It was not
until they were descending the mountain that the count commenced to relate
his life to his son, which we already know from his mother, but we cannot
pass over in silence his poignant regrets at the loss of such saintly and
sweet intercourse. When he looked at his son, left an orphan at twelve
years of age, with no resources but his perseverance and good conduct, and
reflected that he had come out of obscurity and made friends and a name, he
blessed the wife whom he had so cruelly injured and who had given him a
son, the glory of his white hairs and the love of his old age. But his
remorse for his treatment of his wife was nothing to the fear that his son
would refuse him his esteem and tenderness and would not consent to live
with him. But these dread thoughts could not remain long in his mind; the
respectful manner and caressing words of his son effaced them. The more he
studied the character of Robert the more he felt the need of his love and
of pleasing him, and the stronger was his desire to win the heart on which
he set so high a price. To obtain this he gave him his entire confidence,
and let him read his heart as he would an open book, and Robert saw the
remorse his guilty conduct toward his mother had caused him. It was a
painful avowal to make his son, but he had the courage; and the next day,
after Robert had related to him the principal events of his life, he drew
him to him, saying:

"I owe to thee, my child, a history of the years I have passed far from
thee and thy mother, but it is not that I wish to make a parade of my
regrets and my sufferings, but simply to tell thee in what way God called
me to himself and to virtue."

{202}

"My father," said Robert, "if the recital gives you pain, if it recalls too
vividly your sorrows, do not tell me, I pray you, for I would rather you
should chase away all sadness and smile yourself to life. I know I shall
love you, and I want you to forget what you have suffered. It is not for me
to judge you, and believe me, that, no matter what you say, my respect and
love for you will always be the same."

The count took the hand of his son, but could not reply for some moments,
then commenced thus: "If thy mother has not spoken to thee of my cruelty
and injustice toward her, and, still more, if she has rather exculpated
than accused me to thee, I owe it to her memory to avow that I alone was
the guilty one, and that she was to me, to the last moment, a model of
goodness, patience, and gentleness. She was right to leave me, for I was
then so blinded by my passions that the threat which decided her to go I
would without doubt have executed, if she had not taken the desperate part
which has turned so happily to thy advantage. I say it to my shame, I was
barbarous, wicked, and ungrateful to thy mother, and what is more frightful
is that I was so with premeditation. Incapable of controlling my temper,
and my pride wounded by the reproaches of my family, and by the railleries
of the young fools I called my friends, I carried my treatment to blows and
insults to her who gave thee birth. I know I make thee shudder and fill
thee with horror, but I have cruelly expiated these moments of passion, for
at heart I loved thy mother, and, when I reflected, I cursed my feebleness
and self-love. Unfortunately these moments were of short duration, and the
world and its attractions acted in a fatal manner on my heart, filled with
the deplorable maxims of a corrupt, irreligious, frivolous, and mocking
society. What, then, could stop me in the mad career which would soon bring
me to the abyss already yawning under my feet? Nothing, for I hardly
believed there was a God, and had none of the faith which thy mother has
planted in thy heart. I was as blind and insensate as a drunken man, who
knows neither where he is nor what he says. No curb could be put to my
passions, for I was like the brute that obeys his instincts, only more
miserable, as I had the voice of conscience to enlighten me while he is
deprived of the soul, which is the divine essence. See, then, what I was
when thy mother took thee far from me; and I was in a perfect transport of
fury when on my return to the house I leaned from the servants that thy
mother had gone, taking thee with her. At first, rage was the only passion
that possessed my soul, and it was perfectly incomprehensible to me that a
being as gentle as thy mother had ever proved herself should have the
courage to take such a step; but maternal love was stronger than all things
else to her, and when I found thy empty cradle, I wept and tore my hair in
despair. It was the first time I had really felt as if I was a father; for
when I kissed thy fresh young face, it was more from pride than from
paternal tenderness; but when I knew thou wert gone forever, my heart was
broken. I awoke at once, under the shock of this most agonizing, torturing
sorrow, and from that moment my life of expiation commenced. But I do not
date my return to God from that day, for it was a long time before my lips
uttered a prayer. I suffered more than tongue can tell in the delirious
life into which I was plunged, and which soon destroyed my health and left
me with a sickness which was long and dangerous. In my hours of suffering
and anguish you were always present to my mind, and I knew no one to whom I
could confide my sorrow, and feared to die without seeing you. Days
succeeded each other, until they became years; my despair increased and my
loneliness was horrible.
{203}
The sign of a reprobate was marked like the curse of Cain upon my brow, and
I was consuming myself in useless regrets, without having recourse to the
love and compassion of God, when a providential accident brought near me
one of those angels of charity who consecrate their lives to the care of
the sick and sorrowing.

"A good sister of the order of St. Vincent de Paul came one day to excite
my interest in favor of the poor, and her angelic face and her tender and
persuasive voice touched me deeply. I was strangely attracted to her, and
could not help contrasting her manner with the means used by women of the
world to obtain what they desire. It was with pleasure, I might even say
joy, that I gave her my purse, and we became engaged in conversation. She
had read in my face the ravages of passion and the storms of the heart;
and, as all sorrows were familiar to her, she easily guessed those of my
soul, and forced me by her winning manner to confess to her the cause of my
sufferings. Then when she knew all, she spoke to me in a language so filled
with faith and charity that my frozen soul thawed under the warmth of her
burning words. The name of God was so eloquent in her pure mouth that
before she left me I pronounced it with faith and confidence. From this
moment I prayed, and the saintly woman came several times to finish her
work of grace. By her cares my body regained some strength, and my soul
felt all the hopes of a Christian, all the salutary truths of our sublime
religion. My repentance took the character of resignation, which gave some
calmness and tranquillity to my desolate days. I bade adieu to the world,
putting far from me its perfidious and deceitful charms, which I had before
so eagerly sought, and all the illusions which had appeared seductive and
worthy of my homage were dispelled. The veil had fallen from my eyes, and I
loved now what I had hated. Thy mother appeared to me with her virtues and
her touching simplicity and her charming candor and purity, and, now that I
was in a state to appreciate her, I could behold her no more. At this time
I lost my sister Helena, of whom thy mother has spoken to thee, and she
left a daughter, thy cousin Julia. I took her to my home and heart, but
still she did not console me for thy loss; for, good and amiable as she
was, she was not my son, and the lost happiness is what we always sigh for,
and which can never be replaced. My niece married and soon became a widow,
when she returned to me, and, finding all her efforts to diminish my
sadness without effect, she proposed our traveling. We have been all over
Europe, and everywhere I looked for you and enquired for you, for a secret
voice said to me always, 'Go on! go on! thou wilt find him.' I had already
explored Italy from one end to the other, had visited cold England, crossed
the German States, been through Spain and Portugal, when the fiery
inquietude which kept me always moving made me turn my steps a second time
toward Italy. It was doubtless a presentiment, since it was on this earth,
a thousand times blessed, that I found thee--that we met! I feel that God
as pardoned me, and my sorrows are at an end. Thou art the conciliating
angel, the treasure and consolation and the last happiness of a penitent
old man who has lost and suffered much. Oh! may thy love be the sign of the
forgiveness thy mother has sent me, and a bond of peace and felicity. But,"
said the count, in a suppliant tone, in terminating this long and painful
confession, "thou wilt not leave me, Robert? thou wilt live with me, my
son? It would be too cruel to deprive me of thy presence, and, after having
found my earthly heaven, thou wilt not plunge me into the depths of hell;
for if I lose thy tenderness, I lose all."

"My father," replied Robert, "I could not leave you. I am too happy to
possess your love to deprive myself of so sweet a joy. God has reunited us,
and we will never again separate!"


{204}


  Chapter XIII.

  "Nothing can be dearer to a man
  than a father he is proud of."


Some days after this interview, Robert, the count, and Julia were
travelling toward l'Auvergne. If the dead could feel in their cold graves,
certainly Robert's mother would have felt a deep and holy joy in seeing her
son and her husband kneeling on her tomb. But their eyes were not on the
grave, but raised toward heaven, and Robert saw the same vision which had
appeared to him in his youth, and he cried out: "I see it! O my father, I
see it! She blesses us."

The name of Dormeuil was effaced from the modest stone, and that of
Countess de Verceuil substituted, to the great astonishment of the people
of the surrounding country. Then the count visited the little house which
had fallen in ruins, and here Robert called up a thousand tender memories,
and thanked God for the manifestation of his love in permitting him to find
his father. But it was not for the rank he would have in the world, nor for
the titles society would look upon with jealous eyes, nor for this
wonderful elevation of his talent, which dazzled and made him happy. It was
the power which God had put into his hands, to enable him to do good to
others, and the knowledge of the future of repose and comfort he could
ensure to the two objects of his early affection, good Madame Gaudin and
the old soldier of the guard. It was of them that he thought when he said.
"I am rich." How he longed to see Paris, and to be folded again to the
hearts of his friends, from whom he had so long been separated. His father,
seeing his impatience, smiled at the projects he formed for them, but was
none the less anxious to know them and thank them for the cares they had
bestowed on his son. At last they arrived, and when they reached the house
a cruel thought crossed Robert's mind, that they might be "no more." His
heart beat, and he scarcely dared to knock, but listened a moment, and--oh!
what happiness--two well-known voices fell upon his ear. One said: "Six
months have passed since his last letter, and no news of our dear child.
What can have happened him?" "You must have patience, good woman," said the
other voice, "he can't always find opportunities to write. I believe the
reason he does not write is, that be intends to come some day soon." "Ah! I
know he is not sick, and it is the faith of Cyprien says it. The Lord is
too just to make so good a boy ill."

Completely reassured, Robert knocked and entered immediately. Two cries
came at the same time from two hearts that joy suffocated. Robert raised
Madame Gaudin in his arms; her too sudden surprise had overwhelmed her with
emotion, and Cyprien cried, "It is you, it is you!" wiping away a tear. "I
am happy, now, Mister Robert. I knew you would come back, but I have had a
time consoling this poor woman, who saw everything in blackness and
despair."

Robert pressed the faithful soldier to his heart, then covered Madame
Gaudin with caresses, enquired for her health, and wished to know if either
of them had suffered in any way since he left them. When the confusion of
this sudden meeting had subsided a little, both Cyprien and dame Gaudin
perceived that Robert had no luggage. "Where are your effects, my child?"
said the good woman. Robert smiled, and said he had left them at home, "How
at home? And do you not intend to remain with us, my dear Robert?" "Yes, of
course, but we will live in another house, and I will take you to your new
home." She opened her astonished eyes, and followed Robert, who descended
the steps, and, calling a carriage, made his friends get in, and directed
the coachman to drive them all to No. 110, rue Grenelle, Saint Germain.

{205}

On the way Madame Gaudin tried to draw from him his secret, but all
attempts were useless, for he took delight now in teasing her. Stopping in
front of the hotel where his father was, he took the arm of his worthy
benefactress and conducted her to the saloon where the Count de Verceuil
waited. "Father," said he, as he entered, "here is the excellent woman who
has taken the place of a mother to me, and who for my sake generously
sacrificed all she had." "Madam," said the count with amiable courtesy,
"excuse me that I did not come for you myself, as it was my duty to do, but
I wished to allow Robert the pleasure of surprising you. You are at home
here, madam, in the house of my son, and I hope you will always be his
friend." "Your son?" she said, half stupefied. "Who, then, is your son? Ah!
I know," she cried with lively anguish, a secret sentiment of jealousy
coming into her heart; "it is Robert. God is just, and has given him this
recompense. What I have done for your son, monsieur, anyone else would have
done in my place, for no one could have helped loving so good and generous
a child. But I do not merit so much kindness at your hands. I am only a
poor creature, without either education or manners, so how can I live with
you?" "These things are of little value in my eyes, my dear madam. What I
honor in you, and what all honest and virtuous people would consider above
everything else, is the nobleness of your soul and the virtues of which you
have given so bright an example. You will give me great pain if you refuse
an offer that comes from the heart, and that I make you in my name and the
name of my son. We will live and enjoy together the favors God has been
pleased to bestow upon us. And you will be ours, my brave Cyprien" said the
count, taking the hand of the old soldier. "I know you love my son, and
this entitles you to my friendship. Will you accept it?" "Oh! yes; with all
my heart," replied Cyprien, looking affectionately at Robert, who was
watching silently the interview between his father and his friends.

His father was kind and good, and often he blessed the day they met.
Nothing can be dearer to a man's heart than a father he is proud of. Robert
had experienced this feeling for his mother, whom he venerated almost as
much as God. She was to him the type of every virtue. His misfortunes and
affliction had entirely changed his father, and to the vain pleasures of
the world had succeeded the practices of religion and the duties of the
Christian. All the virtues he admired in his mother he found in the
paternal heart, tried in the crucible of adversity. In a word, the father
was worthy of the son as the son was worthy of the father, and a sweet
harmony reigned in this family, bound to each other by the tenderest ties.
All rank was effaced, and the noble count, the heir of a great name and an
immense fortune, and the old woman and the old soldier lived with no other
desire than to make each other happy. Robert did not give up his
profession, and his name is now illustrious in the world of art! He married
his cousin Julia de Moranges, and crowned with joy and happiness the last
days of his father, who now sleeps the sleep of the just. Thus ends our
story. We have tried to trace the struggling life of Robert, and its
glorious recompense. We have tried faithfully to reproduce his touching
virtues and the noble and beautiful sentiments that adorned his soul, and
also to inspire our young readers with a desire to imitate him. We have
tried to show the efficacious and all-powerful help of religion in
nourishing the teachings of a Christian mother, and that a good and
persevering child can overcome all obstacles. Have we, then, succeeded and
obtained your approbation? If there are among you, my dear readers, some
poor little orphans like Robert, call down the blessings of your mother
upon your heads, and, though she lives in heaven, she will watch over you
with tender solicitude, and the God of the motherless will be your sure
refuge and your final Saviour.
{206}
Think not that you can live without constant prayer to God, the author of
your beings and the giver of every good and perfect gift. Put your whole
trust and confidence in him and his mercy, and whether obscurity or fame be
yours, always remember that he knows best, and places you in whatever
position best suits you. Should he give you the transcendent gift of
genius, you must struggle hard to obtain its rewards, and, whatsoever you
do, remember to do it for the honor and glory of God and the good of
mankind; and then, when you are called to leave this life for that better
world where all cares cease, you can welcome death, which will open for you
the gate of life, and exchange with joy the changing scenes of earth for
the unfading bliss of heaven!


------

    Original.

    Confiteor.

    "Confess therefore your sins
    one to another."--St. James v. 16.

    By Richard Storrs Willis.


  When to God alone I make confession,
    Why, my shameful heart! so light thy task?
  While so deep the shame and the emotion
    When to man thou must thy guilt unmask?

  Only here we find the true abasement:
    More than God we dread the eye of man!
  Hence the justice that, by heaven's ordaining,
    Human guilt a human eye should scan!

  Ah! how oft, by some great sin o'ermastered,
    Hearts in secret pray, but all in vain!
  Not till human ear has heard the story
    Peace descends and Guilt can smile again!

  Thus must sin requite both earth and heaven;
    Since 'gainst man the wrong as well as God!
  Just amends are due the Heavenly Father--
    Due my brother of this earthly sod!

  Ye who fain would find a peace that's vanished.
    Heaven demands no long, desponding search!
  Seek the kind, attentive ear of Jesus,
    Seek his listening human ear--the Church!

------

{207}

  From The Contemporary Review.

  Mediaeval Universities. [Footnote 46]

    [Footnote 46: This article is not written by a Catholic, which the
    reader will easily see from some of its expressions. With these
    exceptions the article is very interesting.--C. W.]


Universities are not mentioned in mediaeval documents before the beginning
of the thirteenth century. At that period, however, they stand before the
eyes of the historian already fully developed, and in the very prime of
vigorous manhood, without offering any clue as to their birth and lineage,
except such as they bear visibly imprinted in their very nature. This
remark holds good only for the most ancient universities--_Paris,
Oxford_, and _Bologna_--all the other institutions of the kind
being easily traced to their foundation, and recognized as copies of the
ancient types. There are, indeed, documents extant which refer the
foundation of the three mentioned universities to a very respectable
antiquity, and according to which Paris claims Charlemagne as its founder;
Oxford, Alfred the Great; Bologna, the Emperor Theodosius II.; and Naples,
the Emperor Augustus. But these documents are each and all the fabrications
of later times, which, agreeably to mediaeval disregard of critical
investigation, could easily spring up and find credence, because they
supplied by fables what could not be gained by historic evidence, the halo
of remote antiquity. Setting, therefore, apart these spurious credentials,
we prefer to trace the lineage of our venerable institutions as near as
possible to their source by reading and interpreting the record they bear
of themselves.

Twice during the middle ages the church saved literature from utter ruin:
first when barbarous nations overflooded Europe in the great migration, and
a second time during the confusion which arose upon the death of
Charlemagne. Science was indeed the _enfant trouvé_, to take care of
which there was no one in the wide world but the church alone. Under its
fostering care literature and learning started on a new career in the
asylums erected in the schools of abbeys, monasteries, and convents--a
career, however, characterized by a peculiar timidity, which shrank from a
critical analysis of sacred and profane literature alike--abhorring the
latter for its savor of heathenism, revering the former with too much awe
to subject it to dissecting criticism. In this narrowness of space, this
timidity of development, the youthful plant might have been stunted in its
growth, but for the breath of life which the genius of human civilization
imparted to its feeble offshoot to rear it to the full vigor of manhood.
This inspiration again proceeded from the church, which made the very
marrow of her substance over to the school, that it might feed on it and
wax strong, so as to become the bearer of mediaeval civilization, the
leader of society in science and education. At a period when the church had
given form to its doctrines by investing them in a dogmatic garb, so as to
remove them from beneath the ruder or careless touch of experimenting
heresy, faith was satisfied, and in its satisfaction felt secure from any
perilous raid on its domain. Hence, it became less timid in facing the
dissecting-knife of the philosopher; nay, on the contrary, it soon detected
the new additional strength it might derive from the disquisitions of
philosophical science; and thus it came to pass that the dogma of the
church left the bosom of the mother that gave it birth, and placed itself
under the guardianship of the school.
{208}
The result of this transmigration is but too evident. First of all, the
interest of philosophical inquiry was duly regarded by obtaining by the
side of faith its share in the cultivation of the human mind, and, on the
other hand, the dogma or symbol of faith, which hitherto had evaded the
grasp of human intellect, and therefore assumed the position of a power
which, though not hostile, was yet not friendly to the aspirations of the
human mind, now turned its most intimate and faithful ally. The motto of
this alliance between dogma and philosophy--the well-known "Credo ut
intelligam"--is the key-note of scholasticism. Thus, then, theology became
the science of the school, when the dogma was completely confirmed and
established, and the school sufficiently developed to receive it within its
precincts; and this alliance, which produced a Christian philosophy in
scholasticism, was the principal agent also in bringing about a new phase
of the mediaeval school in the _Studium Generale_ or
_University_.

From the earliest centuries it had been a practice with the Christian
church in newly converted countries to erect schools by the side of
cathedrals. Where our Lord had his temple, science had a chapel close by.
These cathedral schools became in the course of time less exclusively
clerical, at the same rate as the chapters of cathedrals turned more
secular in their tendencies. In consequence of this metamorphosis the
cathedral school attracted a large number of secular students, while the
monastic schools more properly limited themselves to the education of the
clerical order. But for all that the cathedral school bore a decidedly
clerical character. The bishop continued to be the head of the schools in
his diocese, and through his chancellor _(cancellarius)_ exercised
over the students the same authority as over all others that stood under
episcopal jurisdiction. Very often we meet with several or many schools
connected with different churches of one and the same diocese. In this case
each school had its own "rector," but all of them were subject to the
supervision and jurisdiction of the bishop, or his representative the
chancellor. Though they followed their literary and educational pursuits
each within its own walls and independently of the others, yet on certain
occasions they were reminded of their consanguinity of birth and their
relationship to the church, when on festive celebrations, such as the feast
of the patron saint of the diocese, rectors, teachers, and students of the
different schools rallied round the banner of their diocesan, and appeared
as one body under their common head, the bishop. Thus we see the cathedral
schools brought nearer to each other by two agencies of a uniting
tendency--the jurisdiction of the bishop and their relation to the church.
That which had grown spontaneously out of the circumstances of the time
awaited only the "fiat" of the mighty to accomplish its metamorphosis, and
assume its final shape in the _Studium Generale_. The church required
an able expositor of her dogmas, a subtle defender of her canonical
presumptions, and both she found in the school. Popes then granted
privileges and immunities to the cathedral and monastic schools of certain
cities, and these schools, following the impulse and tendencies of the age,
united in corporations and became universities. Under the circumstances it
must appear a vain attempt to search for documentary evidence as to the
first foundation of the three ancient universities. We can only adduce
facts to show when and where such establishments are first mentioned, and
yet we must not draw the conclusion that universities are contemporary with
those documents which first bear direct testimony to their existence. For
we all know that in primitive ages, when new institutions are gradually
being developed, centuries may pass before the new-born child of a new
civilization is christened, and receives that name which shall bear record
of its existence to future generations.
{209}
As far back as the eleventh century, we find at _Paris_ schools
connected with the churches of _Notre Dame, St. Geneviève, St.
Victor,_ and _Petit Pont_, but it appears doubtful whether they had
been united in a _Studium Generale_ before the end of the twelfth
century. The first direct mention of a "_university_" at Paris is made
in a document of the year 1209. _Oxford_ may, in point of antiquity,
claim equality at least with Paris; and the assumption that Alfred the
Great planted there, as elsewhere, educational establishments is certainly
not without some plausibility. Concerning the existence of monastic schools
in that town previously to the twelfth century, not a doubt can be
entertained; but to refer the foundation of Oxford University to the times
of Alfred the Great is simply an anachronism. Oxford, quite as much as
Paris, or rather more so, bears in the rudimentary elements of its
constitution the unmistakable traces of its origin in the cathedral and
monastic schools. _Bologna_ was one of the most ancient law schools in
Italy. Roman law had never become quite extinct in that country; and in the
great struggles between spiritual and temporal power, ever and again
renewed since the eleventh century, it was ransacked with great eagerness
for the purpose of propping up the claims of either pope or emperor, as the
case might be. The Italian law schools, therefore, enjoyed the patronage of
powers spiritual and temporal, which raised them to the summit of fame and
prosperity, and then again dragged them to the very verge of ruin by
involving them in the struggles and consequent miseries of the two parties.
The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa well understood how to appreciate the
vantage-ground which presented itself in the codices of the ancients for
the support of imperial presumptions, and consequently he expressed his
favor and good-will to the lawyers of Italy by confirming the ancient law
school at Bologna--a confirmation which was combined with extraordinary
privileges to professors and students sojourning in that town, or engaged
on their journey there or back. Bologna may, therefore, be regarded as a
privileged school or university since the year 1158, without, however,
being such in the later acceptation of the term, that is, endowed with the
four faculties. Concerning this distinction we shall have to advance a few
remarks hereafter.

The term university (universitas), in its ancient signification, denotes
simply a community, and may, therefore, be applied to the commune of a
city. Hence, the distinction will be evident between the expression
"_Universitas Bolognae_" and "_Universitas Studii
Bonnensis_"--the commune of Bologna, and the community of the university
of Bologna. The elder title of a university is _Studium_, a term
applied to every higher school, and supplied with the epithet
_Generale_ either from the fact of divers faculties being taught, or
students of all nations being admitted within its pale. The most
distinctive trait of the Generale Studium is manifested in the social
position it had gained as a corporate institution invested with certain
rights and privileges, like all other guilds or corporations of the middle
ages. The university was the privileged guild, the sole competent body from
which every authority and license to teach science and literature emanated.
The man upon whom it conferred its degrees was, by the very fact of gaining
such distinction, stamped as the scholar, competent to profess and teach
the liberal arts. The graduate, however, gained his social position not by
the act of promotion, but by the privileges which the governing heads of
church and state had connected with that act. Hence, it was considered an
indispensable condition that a newly erected university should be confirmed
in its statutes and privileges by the pope, the representative of the whole
community of Christians. The universities having gained a social position,
their members were henceforth not merely scholars declared as such by a
competent body of men, but they also derived social advantages which lay
beyond the reach of those who stood outside the pale of the university.

{210}

A short sketch of the universities erected in different European countries
after the pattern of the three parent establishments may suffice to give
our readers an idea of the zeal and emulation displayed by popes and
emperors, princes and citizens, in the promotion of learning and
civilization.

In the year 1204 an unfortunate event befell Bologna. Several professors,
with a great number of scholars, removed from that place to _Vicenza_,
where they opened their schools. This dismemberment of the university of
Bologna must have had its cause in some--we do not learn exactly what--
internal commotion. The secession was apparently of very little effect, for
the university of Vicenza, to which it had given rise in 1204, ceased to
exist in the year 1209, most probably in consequence of the professors and
scholars returning to the alma of Bologna as soon as this could be
opportunely done. A more detailed account has been handed down to us
concerning the secession of 1215, when Rofredo da Benevento, professor of
civil law, emigrated from Bologna to _Arezzo_, and erected his chair
in the cathedral of that city. A crowd of scholars followed the course of
the great master. From letters written by Pope Honorius between 1216 and
1220, it would appear that the citizens of Bologna, in order to prevent the
dismemberment of their university, tried to impose upon the scholars an
oath, by which they were to pledge themselves never, in any way, to further
the removal of the Studium from Bologna, or to leave that school for the
purpose of settling elsewhere. The students, however, refused to take this
oath of allegiance, a refusal in which they were justified by the pope, who
advised them rather to leave the city than undertake any engagement
prejudicial to their liberties. The result was the rise of the university
of Arezzo, where, besides the ancient schools of law, we find in the year
1255 the faculties of arts and medicine. From a similar dissension between
the citizens and scholars seems to have been caused the emigration to
_Padua_, where the secessionist professors and scholars established a
university which soon became the successful rival of Bologna.

In the year 1222 the Emperor Frederick II., from spite to the Bolognese,
and a desire of promoting the interests of his newly erected university of
_Naples_, commanded all the students and professors at Bologna who
belonged as subjects to his Sicilian dominions to repair to Naples. The
non-Sicilian members of the Alma Bonnensis he endeavored to allure by
making them the most liberal promises. At any other time this ungenerous
stratagem might have resulted in the entire ruin of the university of
Bologna; this city, however, being a member of the powerful Lombard League,
could afford to laugh at Frederick's decrees of annihilation. As long as
its founder and benefactor was alive, the university of Naples enjoyed a
high degree of fame and excellence among the studia of Italy, for Frederick
spared neither expense nor labor in the propagation of science and
literature.

Pope Innocent IV. erected the university of _Rome_ about the year
1250, and conferred upon it all the privileges enjoyed by other
establishments of the kind. But the praise of having raised that university
to its most flourishing condition, and endowed it with all the faculties,
is due to Pope Boniface VIII.

Lombardy owed its literary fame to the noble Galeazzo Visconti, who formed
the design of erecting a university close to Milan which should provide for
the increased wants in science and education among the population of that
capital and the surrounding cities.
{211}
The site chosen for the purpose was _Pavia_, which had for a long time
been the resort of literati of every description who had been educated in
the neighboring university of Bologna. The new university soon acquired
great fame, enjoying the special patronage of the Emperor Charles IV. of
Germany.

The French universities were organized after the model of Paris, but most
of them had to be contented with one or several of the faculties, exclusive
of theology, which was, and continued to be, a privileged science reserved
to Paris and a few of the more ancient universities. Thus we see that
_Orleans_, where a flourishing school of law had existed since 1284,
was provided in 1312 with the charters and privilege of of the Studium
Generale. _Montpelier_ University, according to some historians, was
founded in 1196 by Pope Urban V.; but with certainty we can trace its
famous school of medicine only as far back as the year 1221. To this was
added the faculty of law in 1230, and Nicolas IV. finally established, in
1286, the faculties of civil and canon law, medicine and arts.
_Grenoble_, _Anjou_, and a few others, though entitled to claim
the privileges of the Studium Generale, hardly ever exceeded the limits of
ordinary schools, whether in arts, law, or medicine.

The system of centralization, which at that time had already gained the
upper hand in the church and state of France, impressed its type on social
and scientific life as well. Paris became the all-absorbing vortex which
engulfed every symptom of provincial independence; and the Alma Parisiensis
developed in her bosom, as spontaneous productions of her own body, the
colleges which were founded on so grand a scale as to outweigh in
importance all the minor universities, each college forming, so to say, a
"universitas in universitate." This observation holds good for England and
the English universities.

Turning our attention to Germany, we find, in accordance with the social
conditions of the country, the development of academic life taking a
somewhat intermediate course between the Italian universities on the one
side, and Paris and Oxford on the other. Though emperors and territorial
princes vie with each other in the promotion of educational establishments,
Germany nevertheless bears a close resemblance to Italy in so far as in
both countries the opulent citizens are among the first to exert themselves
in the propagation of science and the diffusion of knowledge. The
university of _Prague_, founded by the Emperor Charles IV. in 1318,
was soon followed by that of _Vienna_, founded in 1365 by Albertus
Contraetus, duke of Austria, and _Heidelberg_, erected by Rupert of
the Palatinate, and confirmed by the pope in 1386. The university of
Cologne owed its origin to the exertions made by the municipal council, who
succeeded in gaining a charter from Pope Urban VI. in 1388. _Erfurt_
also is mainly indebted to the zeal of the citizens and the town council
for its erection, which took place in 1392. _Leipzig_ was founded, in
its rudiments at least, in 1409 by the Elector Frederick I. of Saxony, but
it started into the full vigor of academic life under the impulse imparted
to it by the immigration of two thousand students, Catholic Germans, who,
to escape Hussite persecution, had departed in a body from the university
of Prague.

Spain, which we should expect to see forward in promoting institutions of
learning, did not much avail herself of those fruits of science which had
ripened to unequalled splendor under the Arabs in the eleventh century.
Recalling, however, to mind the fearful struggles between the Christian and
Arab population, struggles which for centuries shook that country to its
very foundations, we can readily make allowance for the slow advance of
learning in this state of bellicose turmoil. Yet, in spite of these
unfavorable conditions, the schools received no inconsiderable attention
from the Christian rulers of the country.
{212}
The ancient school of _Osca_, or _Huesca_, was revived;
_Saragossa_, which is said to have been founded in 990 by Roderico à
S. AElia, began to thrive again; _Valentia_ was founded by Alphonse of
Leon, and _Salamanca_ in 1239 by Ferdinand of Castile and Leon, both
of which schools arrived at their greatest splendor and the position of
universities at the beginning of the sixteenth century, as did also those
of _Valladolid, Barcelona, Saragossa_ and _Alcala_.

In order to give a general survey of the progress of academic
establishments in the different European countries, we subjoin a list of
all mediaeval universities, with the dates of foundation, which in doubtful
cases are accompanied by a note of interrogation. The dates of the most
ancient universities require no further remark after our previous
observations:

  England and Scotland.

  Oxford           11-
  Cambridge        11-
  St. Andrews      1412
  Glasgow          1451
  Aberdeen         1494
  Edinburgh        1520

  Italy.

  Bologna          11-
  Piacenza         1248
  Padua            1222
  Piza             1339
  Vercelli         1228
  Arezzo           1356
  Vicenza          1204
  Rome             1250 (?)
  Naples           1224
  Fermo            1391
  Perugia          1307
  Pavia            1361
  Siena            1420
  Parma            1412
  Turin            1405
  Florence         1348
  Verona           1339
  Salerno          1250 (?)

  France.

  Paris            11-
  Montpelier       1286
  Avignon          1809 (?)
  Cahors           1332
  Anjou            1348
  Lyons            1300
  Grenoble         1339
  Perpignan        1340
  Poitiers         1431
  Caen             1433
  Bordeaux         1442
  Nantes           1448

  Germany.

  Prague           1348
  Vienna           1365
  Heidelberg       1386
  Cologne          1388
  Erfurt           1392
  Leipzig          1409
  Rostock          1419
  Greifswalde      1456
  Freiburg         1457 (?)
  Trier, (Treves)  1472
  Ingoldstadt      1472
  Basle            1460
  Mayence          1482
  Tübingen         1482
  Würzburg         1400

  Spain and Portugal

  Huesca                 (?)
  Coimbra          1279
  Lisbon           1283
  Valentia         1210
  Salamanca        1239
  Valladolid       1346
  Barcelona        1500
  Saragossa        1474
  Toledo           1499
  Alcala            508

  Other Countries.

  Louvain          1425
  Buda             1465
  Upsala           1477
  Copenhagen       1478
  Cracow           1364


Entering upon the subject of the constitution or organization of the
universities, we need hardly remind our readers that, in accordance with
the nature of their origin and with the spirit of uniformity which pervaded
the middle ages, the constitution of the different universities was
everywhere essentially the same. The university of the most ancient date
was not an exclusive school or establishment existing only for the higher
branches of erudition, but it was a system or various schools, which
chiefly aimed at the education of a competent body of teachers, a
corporation of scientific men. This purpose could be, and indeed was,
attained without splendidly endowed colleges or spacious lecture-rooms. The
university, in its first rudimentary appearance, is an ideal rather than a
reality. There are no traces of buildings exclusively appropriated to
academic purposes, but the first house or cottage or barn, if need were,
was made subservient to scientific pursuits, whenever a licensed teacher or
magister pleased to erect his throne there. Nor did the Studium Generale
confine itself to giving finishing touches of education, but it comprised
the whole sphere of development from boyhood to manhood, so that the boy
still "living under the rod" could boast of being a member of the
university with the same right as the bearded scholar of thirty or forty
years of age. The same academic privileges which were enjoyed by the
magister or doctor extended to the lowest of the "famuli" that trod in the
train of the academical _cortége_.
{213}
A _Corpus Academicum_, with its various degrees of membership, its
distinction of nations and faculties, its peculiar organization and
constitution--such are the characteristic traits of all the mediaeval
universities which we are about to examine. To the Corpus Academicum
belonged the _students_ (scholares), _bachelors_ (baccalaurei),
_licentiates, masters_ (magistri), and doctors, with the governing
heads, the proctors (procuratores), the _deans_ (decani), and the
_rector_ and _chancellor_ (cancellarius). To these were added
officials and servants of various denominations, and finally the
trades-people of the university, designated as _academic citizens_.
Every student was obliged to present himself within a certain time before
the rector of the university in order to have his name put down in the
album of the university (matricula), to be matriculated. He pledged his
word by oath to submit to the laws and statutes of the university, and to
the rector in all that is right and lawful (licitis et honestis), and to
promote the welfare of his university by every means in his power. At the
same time he had to deposit a fee in the box (archa) of the academic
community, the amount of which was fixed according to the rank of the
candidate, as it was not unusual for bishops, canons, abbots, noblemen,
doctors, and other graduates to apply for membership in some university.
After being matriculated and recognized as a member of the body, the
student had to assume the academic dress, which characterized him as such
to the world at large. The dress was identical with that of the clergy, and
from this and other incidents every member of the school was termed
_clericus_, and all the members collectively _clerus
universitatis_ whence _clericus_ (clerc) came to designate a
_scholar_, and _laicus_ a layman and a _dunce_ as well. The
wearing of secular dress was strictly prohibited, and we can appreciate the
benefit of this arrangement on considering the exorbitant fashions which
prevailed in those days, to the prejudice of propriety and the ruin of
pecuniary means. To carry arms, chiefly a kind of long sword, was a matter
allowed sometimes, more often connived at, but frequently prohibited at
times of disturbances among the scholars themselves, or during feuds with
the citizens. Against visiting gambling-houses or other places of bad
repute, passing the nights in taverns, engaging in dances or revels, or
other diversions unseemly in a "clerc," we find repeated and earnest
injunctions in the statutes of the universities. Where scholars were living
together in the same house under proper surveillance, they formed a
community known as _bursa_. Bursa originally denoted the contribution
which each scholar had to pay toward the maintenance of the community,
whence the term was applied to the community itself. The bursae had, like
inns and public-houses, their proper devices and appellations, commonly
derived from the name and character of the house-owner or _hospes_
(host). Corresponding with the Continental bursae were the English hospitia
and aulae, or halls, which, however, may be traced to higher antiquity than
the former. It is not difficult to recognize in these institutes the germs
of the later colleges. At the head of the hospitium or bursa stood the
_conventor_, who was commonly appointed by the rector, in some places
elected by the members of the bursa, and who had to direct the course of
study, guard the morals of the students, etc. If the hospes or host was a
master or bachelor, the functions of conventor naturally devolved upon him.
The _provisor_ took charge of the victuals, watched over the purchase
and preparation of the same, and settled the pecuniary affairs with the
hospes. Discipline in the bursae and halls was rigorous and severe, and it
could not be otherwise at a time when the individual man was not restrained
by a thousand formalities and conventionalities, but allowed to develop
freely his inherent faculties and powers, often to such a degree as to
prove prejudicial to the peace of society, unless they were curbed by the
severe punishment which followed transgression.
{214}
We meet in the earliest times of the universities with but very few
systematic regulations as far as internal discipline is concerned. This was
a matter of practice, and left rather to be settled according to the
requirements of each case as it arose. Practice, again, taught the pupil a
lesson of abstemiousness and self-denial which might go far to outdo in its
effect our best text-books on moral philosophy. The convictorial houses, as
well as the university at large, were poor, being without any funds but
those which flowed from the contributions of the scholars and members of
the university. A life of toil and endurance was that of the scholar. If he
had a fire in the winter season to warm his limbs, and just sufficient food
to satisfy his gastronomic cravings, be found himself entitled to praise
his stars. The lecture-rooms did not boast of anything like luxury in the
outfitting. Some rough structure of the carpenter's making which
represented the pulpit was the only requisite piece of furniture; chairs
were not wanted, as the pupils found sitting accommodation on the floor,
which was strewn with straw or some other substance of nature's own
providing, and on which ardent disciples cowered down to listen to the
words of wisdom flowing from the lips of some celebrated master. When, at a
later period, the university of Paris went so far in fastidious innovations
as to procure wooden stools for the pupils to sit upon, the papal legates
who had come on a visitation severely censured the authorities for their
indiscretion in opening the university to the current of luxury, which
would not fail, they affirmed, to have an enervating effect on the mind and
body of the pupil; and for a time the scholars had to descend again from
the stool to the floor. Early rising was so general a habit in those days
as to make it almost superfluous to mention that the pupils had gone
through their morning worship and several lessons by the time the more
refined student of modern days is accustomed to rise.

The lowest of academical degrees was that of _Bachelor_
(Baccalaureus). [Footnote 47] Certain historical evidence of the creation
of bachelors at Paris appears in the bull of Pope Gregory IX., of the year
1281, though the degree must be of a remoter date, for the pope alludes to
it not as a novel institution, but in terms which induce us to admit its
previous existence. When a scholar had attended the course of lectures
prescribed by his faculty, and gone through a certain number of
disputations, he might present himself as a candidate for the bachelorship.
Having passed his examination before the doctors (magistri) of his faculty
to their satisfaction, and taken the usual oath of fidelity and obedience
to the university, he gained the actual promotion by the chancellor.
Hereupon be proceeded with his friends and others whom he chose to invite,
in a more or less brilliant _cortége_, to the banquet which he
provided in honor of the occasion. In the procession the staff or sceptre
(baculus, sceptrum, virga) of the university was carried in front of the
new-made bachelor, as the emblem of his recently gained academical dignity.
The bachelors were still only a higher class of students, and as such they
are frequently called _Archischolares_. They, of course, preceded the
students in rank, were allowed to wear a gown of choicer material, and the
cap called _Quadtatum_, while the _Birrettum_ [Footnote 48] was
reserved for the doctors.

    [Footnote 47: As to the derivation of this term hardly a doubt can be
    entertained. The ancient custom of carrying the academic staff or
    scepter (baculus) before the candidates on his promotion to the first
    degree, undoubtedly gave origin to the terms _Bacularius_ and
    _Baculariatus_, which only in later times were corrupted into
    _Baccularius_ and _Baccalaureus_. Thus with Kink against
    Balaeus, Voight, and others, who give the most fantastic derivations,
    such as _bataille_ (batalarius), _bas-chevalier_, etc.]

    [Footnote 48: _Quadratum_, the square cap; _birrettum_, a
    term still preserved in the French _barrette_, a cardinal's hat;
    in German the term _barrett_ is used for the cap worn by priests
    when in official dress.]

{215}

The bachelors were closely connected with their respective faculties, and
could not renounce this connection, or even choose another place of
residence, without special permission. They formed the transition from the
students to the masters, as they participated in the functions of both.
They had to direct the private study and repetitions of the scholars, and
work out the doctor's system, which the latter merely sketched in its
principal theses and rudimentary outline. The bachelors, in fact,
represented the hardest worked people of the body academic. In later
centuries they were actually ill treated by the doctors of Paris, who
confined themselves to deliver one single lecture in the whole year,
leaving all the rest of the work to their inferior fellow-graduates.
Besides their share in teaching the students, they performed other
important duties. They were the industrious copyists of classical works,
and while they thus toiled for the instruction of others in narrower or
wider circles, they at the same time qualified themselves for the
attainment of higher degrees. Opportunities for the advancement of their
own erudition were given in the _disputations_. It was incumbent upon
every doctor or master (magister) from time to time to hold and direct a
public disputation, at which the doctors, bachelors, and students were
present. The doctors, clad in the furred doctor-gown (cappa, taphardum),
and with the _birrettum_, took their places on elevated chairs, which
were arranged in a circle round the walls of the hall. The cross seats were
occupied by the bachelors, behind whom mustered the plebeian students, in
earlier times cowering on the floor, later on provided with the luxury of
seats.

The presiding doctor, who directed the disputation, having entered the
pulpit, chose from the text-book a certain passage and formed it into an
argument (quaestio), the development or exposition of which was called
_determinatio_. Now the task of the bachelors commenced, who, with
respect to their functions, were called _respondentes_ and divided
into _defendentes_ and _opponentes_. They had their own pulpit,
from which one or other individual of their class delivered his
_argumentatio, pro_ or _con_, and then awaited the response of
his antagonist. When, however, the contest required a rapid succession of
questions and answers, both occupied the same pulpit, facing each other in
a contest which very often did not lack the stimulus of personal animosity.
When they became extravagant in their argumentation, strayed from the
original question, or in the heat of the combat fell into excesses of
language, it was the office of the presiding doctor to recall them to the
point at issue, or, if need were, to impose silence. Sometimes, and perhaps
not unfrequently, matters became so complicated as to leave a solution of
the question more than doubtful, in which case the doctor, on his own
authority, pronounced a decision, to which the contending parties had to
submit. Similarly to the practice prevalent in tournaments, the
disputations were wound up with a courtesy (recommendatio), a harangue in
favor of the opponent. Students were not allowed to take part in the
disputations directed by a doctor; but they had their own combats of the
kind, presided over by a bachelor.

While promotion to the bachelorship took place four times a year, the
competition for the _license_ could occur only once or twice, commonly
at the opening of the new scholastic year. The scientific requirements
differed in different universities and faculties, and the course of
promotion was not everywhere the same in all its details, but the following
outlines will, we hope, give a fair picture of the generality of cases. The
day of competition for the license (licentia docendi) being agreed upon
between the chancellor and the respective faculties, it was publicly
announced by placards at the entrance of churches and other conspicuous
places, and several times pronounced from the pulpits of the clergy.
{216}
On the appointed day the candidates presented themselves before their
respective faculties, and on the morrow they were introduced to the
chancellor, to petition him that he would graciously accept them as
candidates, and appoint the day of examination. Hereupon they pledged
themselves by oath to be obedient to the chancellor, to promote the welfare
of the university, to further peace and concord among the nations and
faculties, to deliver lectures at least during the first year of their
license, to be faithful to the doctrines of the church, and to defend them
against every hostile aggression. Then the functions of the faculties began
and ended with the examination of the candidate, who, upon having passed
satisfactorily, was recommended to the chancellor for the actual reception
of the license. Thus it becomes evident that the license was not the gift
of the faculty, but emanated from the chancellor as the representative of
the bishop, the church; nay, more, in several Italian universities it was,
in spite of their democratic character, customary for the bishop himself to
preside at the examination for the license and the promotion of the
successful competitors. When the chancellor withheld his confirmation (as
on several occasions of differences having arisen between him and the
university it did happen), the most brilliantly sustained examination
failed to make a licentiate out of a bachelor. The examination for the
three higher faculties was held in the presence of all the doctors, any one
of whom had a right to examine the candidate on the previously appointed
"theses." In the theological faculty the questions were everywhere fixed by
the episcopal representative, the chancellor, who even might interfere in
the examination itself. The same right could be claimed by him in the
faculty of law.

To pronounce judgment on the scientific qualifications of the candidate was
the task of the whole faculty. On the appointed day the successful
competitors appeared in the church in the presence of the chancellor, and,
kneeling down before him (_ob reverentium Dei et sedis apostolicae_),
they received the license, the chancellor using the formula: "By the
authority of God Almighty, the apostles Peter and Paul, and the Apostolic
See, in whose name I act, I grant you the license of teaching, lecturing,
disputing, here and everywhere throughout the world, in the name," etc.
(Ego, auctoritate Dei omnipotentis, et apostolorum Petri et Pauli, et
apostolicae sedis, qua fungor in hac parte, do tibi licentiam, legendi,
regendi, disputandi, hic et ubique terrarum, in nomine Patris et Filii et
Spiritus Sancti. Amen.)

After the act was over there followed the payment of fees and the
inevitable banquet. The arts faculty conferred with the license the degree
of the magisterium at the same time. The license enabled the candidate to
teach in public at all the universities of Western Europe. In the earlier
centuries this prerogative of universal recognition of the license was not
enjoyed by all the universities. That of Paris was honored with it as early
as the year 1279 by Pope Nicolas III.; Oxford did not receive it until the
year 1319; while the university of Vienna enjoyed it ever since its
foundation by the bull of Pope Urban V. of the year 1365. When the church
had performed her functions by bestowing the license upon the candidate, he
was not therewith a member of the faculty. For this purpose he had to seek
approval and reception from the respective faculty itself (petere licentiam
incipiendi in artibus, in medicina, etc.), which, in the regular course of
events, was never withheld. There was in this proceeding a manifestation of
corporate right and independence which the faculties loved to display on
this occasion. Though hardly more than a formality, it tended to give
expression to their consciousness of being free corporations upon which no
candidate could be intruded, though it were by the highest functionary of
the university.
{217}
The bachelors, as we intimated before, may be considered a higher degree of
students, and the licentiates, we may add, formed a lower degree of
masters. They, therefore, sat in the same compartments with the masters,
but in the rear; they might, like the doctors, wear the _cappa_
(gown), but not the _birrettum_; nor were they allowed to deliver
lectures on their own responsibility, but had to do so under the direction
of a doctor. Licentiates, however, if reading by appointment of a doctor,
or in his stead, were considered independent lecturers. To make the
licentiate a doctor, nothing was required but the act of _promotion_
--a mere formality again, but of no slight importance, for it was the final
transaction which stamped the candidate as a man of learning, the
legitimate and competent teacher.

The act of promotion was celebrated with the greatest possible splendor.
The tolling of the church bells gave the signal for the procession to
prepare. All the doctors, licentiates, bachelors, and students, having
previously assembled in front of the candidate's house, they, upon the
second signal being given by the bells, move in a pompous _cortége_
toward the church, where the sound of trumpets and timbrels received them
upon their entrance. For the court, the judges, the magistrates, and the
members of the different faculties, separate accommodation was provided,
the populace filling the remaining space. The doctors of the respective
faculties having taken their seats, the chancellor opened the proceedings
by a brief allocution, in which he permitted the candidate to ascend the
pulpit (_auctoritate cancellarii_). The candidate delivered a speech
(pulchram et decentem arengam) in honor of the faculty, and finally
petitioned for the insignia of doctor. Upon this the promoter (one of the
doctors of the faculty) ascended the pulpit and held an oration
recommendatory of the candidate, and then, following his invitation, all
the doctors formed a circle and received the _doctorandus_ in their
centre, where the promoter transmitted into his hands an open and a closed
volume as the symbols of his scientific avocations, gave him the kiss of
peace as the mark of friendship and fraternity, and placed on his head the
_birrettum_ in manifestation of his new dignity. Immediately after
these ceremonies the new doctor ascended the pulpit (now _sua
auctoritate_) and delivered a lecture on any theme fitting the occasion,
thus availing himself at once of the acquired privilege. From this it would
appear that the act of promotion belonged to the chancellor and faculty
jointly, and not to the university as such, for its actual head, the
rector, took no part whatever in the proceedings. The doctor alone had the
right of wearing a gown ornamented with silk and fur, and the birrettum as
indicative of his rank. In his social position he was considered of equal
rank with noblemen, and therefore wore the golden ring and other attributes
of the nobility, and in public manifestoes he always appears included in
the aristocratic class of society. The titles of _doctor_ and
_magister_ designated one and the same degree, and yet there was a
shade of difference in their meaning, magister (master) being applied to
scientific superiority or mastership, while doctor signified the person
who, in consequence of this degree, exercised the functions of teacher or
professor; hence, magister was the title of courtesy, doctor that of the
professional man, a distinction which will become evident from phrases such
as this: Magister Johannes, doctor in theologia, etc. Every doctor enjoyed
the right, and during the first year of his license undertook the duty, of
lecturing in that faculty which had promoted him.

The officials and servants formed no inconsiderable appendage to the
university. They are mentioned under the names of _notarii, syndici,
thesaurarii,_ and the lower orders of beadles or famuli of various
descriptions. More important, if not in position, yet in number, were the
_academic citizens_.
{218}
To these belonged tailors, shoemakers, laundresses, booksellers,
stationers, and a host of different trades, which had to provide for the
wants of university men exclusively, and formed a body distinct altogether
from the city tradesmen. All these servants of the university, the academic
citizens and their servants, together with the servants of each individual
belonging to the university, counted as members of this community. If we
take into consideration that dignitaries of the church and of the state,
and noblemen, visited the universities, accompanied by a numerous retinue
of attendants and servants; that even scholars of the wealthier middle
classes were followed by two servants at least (and in this case called
"tenentes locum nobilium"--gentlemen commoners?), we can form an idea of
the immense crowd of academic individuals resident in the great
universities. As to the number of academic members in different places, the
opinions of modern historians are at variance, and in spite of their
controversies the real facts of the case have not been ultimately elicited.
Wood, in his history of the university of Oxford, relates that in the year
1250 the number of members of that university amounted to 30,000! This
fabulous number scarcely ever found credence among modern historians until
Huber, the German historian of the English universities, entered the lists
as the champion of Wood's thirty thousand. Though, historically, he has no
new light to throw upon the subject, he makes his deduction in favor of the
thirty thousand plausible enough. Taking into consideration the facts we
have just advanced concerning the wide range of the term of academic
members, adducing, further, the circumstance of Oxford having at that time
attained the meridian of its glory by the immigration of Paris scholars in
1209, and the settlement of the mendicant friars there, he certainly urges
on our minds the belief that the number of academic people must have been
amazingly great. But looking apart from the circumstance that Wood's
assertion is not confirmed by direct documentary evidence, that the average
numbers mentioned before and after the year indicated turn in the scale
between 3,000 and 5,000, we have scarcely any other measure by which to
judge the above statement but the highest mark of numbers related of the
other great universities. Allowing the most favorable circumstances to have
worked in unison toward assembling a large crowd at Oxford University, we
yet believe no one will be likely to uphold the assertion that Oxford
University was at that time, or at any time, more densely populated than
Paris or Bologna. In the year 1250, we know for a fact Germany was not in
possession of one single university, and yet the number of academic
scholars in that country was not inconsiderable. From want of a Studium
Generale in their own country, German scholars had to visit foreign
universities, and the current is clearly distinguishable in two directions,
one to Italy for the study of law, the other to Paris for arts and
theology. Even admitting Oxford's fame for its dialectic and theological
schools having been on an equality with that of Paris, we cannot conceive
how, in its insular position, it could rival with the great continental
universities which offered ready access to students from all parts of
Europe. Now the greatest number ever mentioned at the university of Paris
is 10,000, when in the year 1394 _all_ the members of the university
had to vote in the case of the papal schism, and even this number cannot be
relied on, as, according to Gerson's admission, several members gave more
than one vote, and others voted who had no right to be on the academic
suffrage. Admitting, however, that the gross sum may be an approximately
fair estimate, we turn our attention to Bologna. This university
undoubtedly contained all the advantages of celebrity, easy access, freedom
of constitution, and whatever else may conduce to attract numerous
visitors.
{219}
Yet the highest number is 10,000, mentioned in the year 1262. The
universities of Salamanca and Vienna, certainly not the least among
academic establishments, even in the time of their greatest success and
most flourishing condition, could not boast of a number exceeding 7,000.
From these data it may become sufficiently evident what we have to believe
of Oxford's thirty thousand, a number which must stand on its own merits
until it can be supported and confirmed by direct historic evidence. It is
true the line of demarcation between trustworthy and fabulous accounts
concerning numbers is very difficult to draw in mediaeval records,
especially when they refer to institutions which, exposed to the
vicissitudes of fortune, experienced a continual influx and reflux of
scholars, so that the famous Bologna, which numbered 10,000 members in
1262, had fallen to 500 in the year 1431, not to mention the intermediate
degrees in the scale of numbers.

The whole body academic, numerous and complicated though it was, did not
require any considerable amount of regulating and governing agents. By the
simplicity of rule and government the middle ages characteristically differ
from our own wonderful machineries which claim for every touch that is
wanted the experienced hands of hundreds of officials, and even then they
are oftentimes served badly enough. Self-government was the ruling idea in
the middle ages, and consequently we see the universities directed in their
complicated progress by a number of officials comparatively so small as to
fill the modern observer with amazement. The university being divided into
different bodies or corporations (the nations and faculties), it left the
direction and management or these different institutions chiefly to
themselves. At the head of the nations stood the _proctors_
(procuratores), and the faculties were governed by their deans (decani).
The range of their official rights and duties will be illustrated later on.
The president of the different nations and of the four faculties was the
rector. He was elected for the space of a year, or six months only, by the
proctors or presidents of the nations, and in earlier times regularly out
of the arts faculty; at a later period, and in the younger universities,
out of one of the nations and one of the faculties alternately. The rector
was not to be a married man--at Vienna no monk either; Prague required him
to be a member of the clerical profession, imitating in this, as in almost
everything else, the university of Paris, where even the professors were
bound to celibacy (nullus uxoratus admittebatur ad regentiam). The rector
was the head, the president (caput, principale) of the whole university.
Oxford and Prague alone, where the supreme power was invested in the
chancellor, form in this respect an exception, but only so far as names are
concerned, for the Oxford chancellor was _eo ipso_ rector of the
university. The rector's high dignity found expression in the title of
_Magnificus_, which, in the middle ages, was allowed to none but
princes imperial and royal, and a suitable dress distinguished the highest
official of the university whatever he appeared in public. It is surprising
to learn what an important figure a university rector played on public
occasions. At Paris, and later on at Vienna, the rector, when officiating
in his avocation, preceded in rank even the bishops. The rector of the
university of Louvain (Loewen) Was allowed a life guard of his own; and
even Charles V., attending on one occasion the convention of the
university, took his place after the rector. At Leyden, the stadtholder,
when appearing in the name of the states-general, allowed the precedence to
the rector of the university; and whenever the rector of Padua visited the
republic of Venice he was received by the senate with the highest marks of
honor.
{220}
When at Vienna the court was prevented from attending at the procession on
Corpus Christi, the rector of the university took the place of the
sovereign immediately behind the _sanctissimum_. From the exalted
station which a university rector occupied in society the fact is easily
explained that dignitaries of the church, nobleman of the highest rank, and
even princes of blood royal, did not slight the rectorial purple of the
university. The rector wore, like the deans, a black gown, but on festive
occasions he was dressed in a long robe of scarlet velvet. He acted as the
president of the highest academic tribunal, and held his judicial sessions,
assisted by the proctors, and if he so pleased he might invite the deans as
well. In criminal cases occurring within the bounds of the university, he
could inflict any, from the slightest to the severest penalties of the law.
Hence, a _sword_ and a _sceptre_, were carried before him when he
traversed the streets or appeared on public occasions. He convened the
meetings of the university corporations, and conventions held under any
other authority (even that of the chancellor) had no legal power in
carrying resolutions. What we have just stated concerning the rector holds
good for the chancellor of Oxford. When Paris and other universities
contrived to free themselves from the influence of their diocesan, Oxford
never loosened the close ties which bound it to the church, and received
without opposition its governing head from the bishop. But it must be borne
in mind that the chancellor of the university had nothing whatever to do
with the church of Lincoln, which had its own chancellor. Once appointed by
the bishop, Oxford's chancellor entered upon all the functions, and the
same independent position as the rector elsewhere. On the other hand,
however, he represented the chancellor of the other continental
universities, who formed the connecting links between the university and
the church. During the middle ages the functions of the continental
chancellor were restricted to the few cases of promotion at which be acted
as the representative of the bishop, to give the sanction and blessing of
the church to proceedings which were deemed as naturally belonging to her
proper sphere of supervision and authority. Having so far finished our
sketch of the different members of the Corpus Academicum, we may finally
let them pass in review as they appeared at processions and other public
occasions, according to rank and precedence. At the head of the train we
see, of course, the rector followed by the dean, doctors and licentiates of
theology, with whom went in equal rank the sons of dukes and counts, and
the higher nobility generally. These were succeeded by the dean, doctors
and licentiates of the law faculty, and the students belonging to the
baronial order, and with the medical faculty proceeded the students of the
lower nobility. The fourth division was formed by the dean and professors
(magistri regentes) of the arts faculty and those bachelors of other
faculties who were masters of arts, while the bachelors of arts followed,
and the students closed the procession, they also being divided and
following each other according to the succession of the faculties just
described, where, _ceteris paribus_, seniority gave the precedence. As
in all institutions of medieval society the division of ranks was strictly
observed, and in case of need enforced in the most rigorous manner, a
transgression in this respect being visited on any member with severe,
sometimes the severest penalty, that is, expulsion from the university.

All the different degrees of individuals we have now examined were united
in corporations, representing a union either according to local divisions
in _nations_, or arranged with respect to scientific pursuits in
_faculties_. Concerning the nations of the universities, former
writers intricated [sic] themselves in great difficulties by recurring to
hypotheses in which historical records did not bear them out. According to
Bulseus and Huber the nations of the university represented the different
tribes or nationalities which inhabited a country, and found a rallying
point at the centre of science and education.
{221}
Now, this assertion is in open contradiction to the character and nature of
academic nations, as may become evident from the following data which we
have to advance. The nations of the English universities were, and always
continued to be, those of the _Boreales_ or _northerners_, and
the _Australes_ or _southerners_. Among the Boreales were
included the Scotch, and with the Australes figured the Irish and Welsh. If
it had lain in the plan of those institutions to preserve and foster the
difference of national extraction and to develop it to the highest degree
or contrast, how could this end be obtained by a corporation of men which
contained in itself the contradictory elements of Celtic and Saxon
derivation, elements then more sharply defined and opposed to each other
than now? Directing our attention to Paris, we find at an earlier epoch
there also only two distinct nations, the French and the English, the
former comprising Southern, and the latter Northern Europe. When these two
nations were multiplied into four no regard whatever was paid to the
different nationalities, for the divisions were the _English, French,
Picardian_, and _Norman_. Why, we may ask, was the nation of the
Normans to hold a separate position from that of the English, with whom
they were one body from a political point of view, or from the French, whom
they resembled closely enough in language and manners? When at the
University of Vienna the _Austrian_ nation comprised the Italians, and
the _Rhenish_ nation, besides Southern Germans, the Burgundians,
French, and Spaniards, where is the principle of nationality preserved?
Turning finally to the Italian universities, we meet with hardly any other
distinction but that of _Cisalpine_ and _Transalpine_. How wide
the difference between the nationalities of these academic nations must
have been we may leave it with our readers to conclude, when we state the
fact that in the Transalpine nation we find Germans, Scandinavians,
Frenchmen, Normans, Englishmen, and Spaniards. What then, will be the
question naturally proposed, was the meaning, tendency, and  character of
academic nations? The middle ages, in defining and separating the members
of the university into nations, did not intend to sharpen the national
contrasts and differences, but, on the contrary, to soften them down,
perhaps to destroy them altogether. Not natural _natural extraction_,
but the geographical situation it was which proffered the criterion for
such division. If it were otherwise, they would have applied to these
divisions not the term of _Nationes_ (that is, ubi natus), but that of
_Gentes_. Its chief support our view will derive from the fact that in
the middle ages the distinction of rank and avocations far outweighed that
of nationalities in our acceptation of the term. Just as chivalrous
knighthood represented, without respect to the different countries, an
institution coalesced into one body or corporation, so likewise the school
had its centres of unity, independent of nationalities. The chief criterion
of nationalities, _language_, formed in the scholastic establishments
a centre of unity, Latin being the medium of conversation and literature,
from the Baltic to the Adriatic, and from Cracow to Lisbon. The division
into nations consequently aimed at _uniting_ the different tribes
according to the different quarters of the globe whence they had come.
Every university was looked upon as a geographical centre, and the
different nationalities were grouped into nations, and designated by the
names of those peoples which resided nearest to the central point, the
university. It is true, the division recognized by the university did not
object to secondary combinations among students of the same nationality if
they wished to enter into a league with their countrymen, so that the
Germans, for instance, who belonged to the English nation at Paris, and to
the Transalpine nation of the Italian universities, might at any place form
a separate corporation known as a _province_.
{222}
These provinces, however, were not recognized by, or in any official
relation to the _proctors_ (procuratores). The name itself implies the
nature of their office, that of being the representatives, the advocates,
the attorneys of their respective nations. Not only graduates, but even
students were eligible to the office, because doctrine or learning was not
at all concerned where academic relationship offered the sole guide in the
election. When the whole university was convened, each nation voted
separately, and the majority out of the four votes (of the four nations)
decided. Questions which concern the pecuniary contributions of all the
members, or the external relations of the university and the like, were
discussed and settled in the convention of the nations. The proctors, with
the rector as their head, formed the court of academic jurisdiction, and
they also elected the rector, who in early times was nothing but the
supreme magistrate, the mayor, as it were, of the academic community.

The nations of which we have treated in the preceding paragraph formed the
first and natural division of the Corpus Academicum into independent
corporations, and may therefore outreach in antiquity the faculties. As
soon, however, as the different branches of learning had fully grown into
distinct sciences, it was merely in accordance with the corporate spirit of
the times that the scholars of each respective science separated into
independent bodies and assumed the form and constitution of corporations.
The origin of these scientific corporations or faculties is, like that of
the nations, and of the first universities themselves, shrouded in
obscurity. The sciences represented in the different faculties may surely
be traced back to the early centuries of mediaeval education, having their
prototype in the Trivium and Quadrivium of the monastic schools; but
without entering any further upon probabilities and conjectures about their
origin, we proceed at once to a characterization of the faculties at the
time of their full development, which is historically authenticated. In all
universities the faculties represented the same quadripartite cyclus of
sciences, that is, the _Facultus Artium, Jurisprudentiae, Medicinae_,
and _Theologiae_. It was not requisite for a Studium Generale or
university to comprise all the four faculties; on the contrary, we find at
the early epoch of academic life hardly any university which professed the
four branches of knowledge. Paris and Oxford, for instance, were originally
confined to arts and theology, to which the schools of medicine and law
were added at a later period, probably copied from the model schools of law
and medicine in Italy. Turning to the peninsula of the Apennines we find
there in the earlier times not a single university combining the
theological with the other three faculties. Bologna did not gain the
privilege of a theological faculty before the year 1362, when Pope Innocent
VI. decreed that in the law university the faculty of theology should be
established, and theological degrees conferred by the same. Till then it
had been customary for Italians to betake themselves to Paris, for the sake
of obtaining promotion in theology. Of other Italian universities, Padua
received a theological faculty by Pope Urban V., upon the intercession of
Francesco da Carrara, then, Signor of Padua. Pisa, when obtaining the
confirmation of Pope Benedict XII., was allowed the "studium sacrae
paginae;" but the right of promotion was a case altogether separately
treated, and therefore expressly mentioned where it was bestowed, which,
with regard to Pisa, did not take place. Ferrara also had a theological
school exclusive of the right of promotion; but in the year 1391 it
succeeded in gaining the privilege of promotion in theology, which, by the
end of the fourteenth century, was more universally conceded.
{223}
But even then we find famous schools, such as Piacenza, Pavia, Lucca,
Naples, Perugia, and even that of Rome itself, not participating in the
said prerogative. The university of Montpellier (like most of the French
schools, Paris excepted) had no theological faculty; and Vienna, confirmed
by Pope Urban in 1365, was not favored with a theological faculty
previously to the year 1384. These exceptions were owing to various causes,
partly of a local, partly of a higher and more important nature. The
interests of neighboring universities, for instance, might threaten a
collision (as in the case of Prague and Vienna), or the pursuits of
theological studies could be amply provided for by monastic and cathedral
schools. But the principal cause of this system appears to lie in quite a
different circumstance. The method of Scholastic sophisms had, in spite of
the opposing movements of the popes, gained day by day more ground in the
theological department, a fact which made a strict supervision, and
therefore a more limited scene for theological operations a real
desideratum. The greatest caution was deemed necessary, owing to the fact
that even at Paris, since the scholastic method had gained superiority,
startling doctrines were advanced, divergent from the traditional teaching
of the church, and sufficient to cause apprehension.

Admission to degrees depended first of all on the diligent attendance at
lectures, which the candidate had to prove by testimonials, and secondly on
a certain number of years which he had to devote to the special studies of
his faculty. For the bachelorship of arts a study of two, for the
magisterium a study of three years was required. In the faculty of law the
bachelor had, previously to his promotion, to go through a course of three
years, and after seven years of study the license would be granted; while
the medical faculty imposed for the bachelorship two or three, for the
license five or six years, differing in proportion to the candidate's
previous studies in the faculty of arts. After six years of theological
study the candidate could attain the bachelorship in theology, whereupon
his faculty pointed out one or other chapter of Holy Scripture on which he
had to lecture under the superintendence of a doctor. Having passed three
years in these pursuits he might gain permission to read on "dogmatics" or
doctrinal theology (libri sententiarii). Bachelors were, therefore, divided
into _baccalaurei biblici_ and _baccalaurei sententiarii_, and
both designated as _cursores_. A bachelor who had begun the third book
of the sentences became _baccalaurens formatus_, and after three
years' further practice, that is, after _eleven_ years of theological
study, he presented himself for the license. The head of each faculty, the
_dean_ (decanus), was elected by the graduates out of his respective
faculty, in some cases for six, in others for twelve months. The community
of the university was represented in three different conventions: the
consistory (consistorium), the congregation (congregatio universitatis),
and the general assembly (plena concio). The first was originally the
judicial tribunal, and though its functions became more varied at a later
time, it continued to be the representative assembly of the academic
nations. The congregation was a meeting of a more scientific, and, as it
were, aristocratic character, including only the doctors and licentiates of
the different faculties. It formed the court of appeal from the sentence of
the respective faculties. The general assembly, comprising all the members
of the university, was convened on but few occasions, and then only for the
celebration of academic festivals, or for the publication of new statutes,
or especially in cases when contributions were to be levied from all the
members of the university. On the last-mentioned occasion only had the
students or undergraduates the right of voting; in every other instance
they were restricted to silence, or the more passive though uproarious mode
of participation, by applauding or hissing the proposals and discussions of
their elders and betters.
{224}
Here, again, we have to point out a characteristic difference between the
Cismontane and Transmontane universities. While the whole constitution of
the universities on this side of the Alps, with their laws, statutes, etc.,
was dependent on the aristocratic body of the graduates, the universities
of Italy, and chiefly that of Bologna, display a thoroughly democratic
character. At Bologna the students were the gentlemen who, out of their
number, elected the rectors. The Italian rector was, in fact, identical
with our proctor, though his functions extended over a wider range. The
aristocratic congregation of faculties is almost totally unknown in Italian
universities, where the nations preserved their predominant position all
through the middle ages. The professors were hardly more than the officials
of the students, and in their service, though in the pay of the citizens.
In the documents we never read of any legal transaction being performed by
the faculties, but always by the rectors and the nations, or the rectors
and the students, and even the papal bulls with respect to the Italian
universities freely use the expression of a _universitas magistrorum et
scholarium_. In short, the Italian universities were democracies, while
the western, and chiefly the English universities present traits of a
decidedly aristocratic character.

To complete the sketch of the organization of mediaeval universities we
must add a few remarks concerning their position in society, and the
relation in which they stood to civil and ecclesiastical authorities. The
members of the body academic were subject to three distinct tribunals:
internal discipline and jurisdiction belonged to the functions of the
rector and proctors; violations of the common law which were committed
outside the pale of the university, and required the apprehension of the
delinquent, lay within the pale of the bishop's jurisdiction; and all cases
falling under the head of _atrocia_ were, for final decision, reserved
to the law courts of the crown. The bounds of ecclesiastical jurisdiction
being rather vague and undefined, collisions between the ecclesiastical and
secular authorities would naturally arise. In order to provide for all
emergencies the pope appointed _conservatores_, individuals who had no
direct connection with the university, and could therefore the more
effectually step forward as mediators when they considered its immunities
and liberties endangered. The university of Oxford, for example, was placed
under the guardianship of the episcopal sees of London and Salisbury, and
the "ward," it would appear, contrived to get into so many scrapes that the
charge of _conservators_ was rendered anything but a sinecure. At one
time we find them in a controversy with the crown, at another in a deadly
feud with the city magistrates, and again occasionally exchanging not very
friendly wishes with the bishop of Lincoln, the diocesan of Oxford. When
they found their opponents refractory, they appealed to the pope, who at
once despatched a legate to the scene of action, where, in nine cases out
of ten, the controversy was decided in favor of the university, the darling
child of the church. By the constitution of Pope Gregory IX., granted to
Paris University in the year 1231, and soon extended to Oxford, the
functions of the academic by the side of civil and ecclesiastic authorities
were more clearly and satisfactorily defined. Most conspicuous in that
constitution is a statute, according to which the chancellor of Paris as
well as the municipal authorities had to take an oath to honor and maintain
the privileges of the university. The relations between the academic
authorities and the city magistrates, or, to use an academic phrase,
between gown and town, remained at all times in an unsatisfactory state. In
Italy the universities to a great extent owed their existence to the
liberality of opulent citizens, who valued the institutions far too highly
to disgust them by any infringement of their privileges.
{225}
Should, however, the city of Bologna show difficulties in their path, the
scholars, well aware of a friendly reception elsewhere, packed up their
valuables, or pawned them in case of need, and emigrated to Padua. If the
commune of Padua grew in any way obnoxious to the university, the rectors
and students at once decided on an excursion to Vercelli. The good citizens
of Vercelli received them with open arms, and in the fulness of their joy
assigned five hundred of the best houses in the town for the accommodation
of their guests, paid the professors decent salaries, and to make the
gentlemen students comfortable to the utmost the city engaged two copyists
to provide them with books at a trifling price fixed by the rector. If the
Bolognese emigrants did not feel comfortable at Imola, there was its
neighboring rival Siena, which allured the capricious sons of the Muses
with prospects far too substantial to be slighted by the philosophical
students. These gentlemen having pawned their books, their "omnia sua," the
city of Siena paid six thousand florins to recover them, defrayed the
expenses of the academic migration, settled on each of the professors three
hundred gold florins, and--to crown these acts of generosity--allowed the
students gratuitous lodgings for eighteen months. However much an Italian
student might have relished an occasional brawl in the streets, there was
hardly an opportunity given him to gratify his pugilistic tendencies, while
in this country the street fights between students and citizens often
assumed the most fearful proportions. The more English citizens fostered a
feeling of independence, derived from increased wealth and social progress,
the less were they inclined to expose themselves to the taunts, and their
wives and daughters to the impudence, of some lascivious youth or other.
The students, on the other hand, able with each successive campaign to
point out a new privilege gained, a new advantage won over their
antagonists, would naturally find an occasional fight tend to the promotion
of the interests of the body academic, besides gratifying their private
taste for a match, which in those days, and in this country especially, may
well-nigh have attained the pitch of excellent performance. We do not think
it necessary or desirable to enter into the details of these riots between
_town_ and _gown_ which are very minutely narrated in Huber's
history of the English Universities. From the position which they had
gained in England, it will easily be understood that the universities could
not keep aloof from the great political contests of the times, so that as
far back as King John's reign the political parties had their
representatives at the academic schools, where the two nations of Australes
and Boreales fought many a miniature battle, certainly not always with a
clear discernment as to the political principles which they pretended to
uphold.

It is very curious to observe the manner of self-defence which those
gigantic establishments adopted when they were pressed by the supreme
powers of church or state. In the first instance, they had recourse to
suspension of lectures and all other public functions, a step sufficiently
coercive on most occasions to force even the crown into compliance with
their wishes. Should, however, this remedy fail, they applied to still more
impressive means, which consisted in dissolution of the university or its
secession to another town. Even the most despotic monarch could not abide
without apprehension the consequences of such a step, if resorted to by a
powerful community such as Paris and Oxford, for it had received legal
sanction in the constitution granted by Gregory IX., and its results were
far too important to be easily forecast or estimated.
{226}
We have already alluded to the frequent migrations of Italian universities,
and need, therefore, only point out the impulse imparted to Oxford by the
immigration in 1209 of a host of secessionist students and professors from
Paris, the unmistakable influence on the development of Cambridge exercised
by secessionist scholars of Oxford, and the rise of the university of
Leipzig upon the immigration of several thousand German students who, with
their professors, seceded from Prague, where Slavonic nationality and
Hussite doctrines had gained the ascendency over Germans and Catholics.

The universities gradually emancipated themselves, rose higher and higher
in the estimation of society, and thus became the sole leaders and guides
of public opinion. Popes and emperors forwarded their decrees to the most
famous universities in order to have them inserted in the codes of canon
and civil law, discussed in the lectures of the professors, and thus
commended to a favorable reception among the public. As the highest
authorities of church and state, so did individual scholars appreciate the
influence of Alma Mater. It was not uncommon for literary men to read their
compositions before the assembled university, in order to receive its
sanction and approval before publication. So did Giraldus, for example,
recite his Topography of Ireland in the convention of the university of
Oxford, and Bolandino his chronicle in the presence of the professors and
scholars of Padua.

We cannot more fitly conclude our remarks on the social position of the
mediaeval universities than by shortly narrating the occasion on which they
displayed, for the last time in the middle ages, the immense power of their
social position. The university of Paris, as it behoved the most ancient
and eminent theological school, took the lead in the movements which were
made in the case of the papal schism. Ever memorable will be the occasion
when, on Epiphany, 1391, Gerson, the celebrated chancellor of the
university of Paris, delivered his address on the subject before the king,
the court, and a numerous and brilliant assembly. Owing to his exertions
and the co-operation of the professors and members of the university,
certain proposals were agreed upon which tended to restore peace and unity
in the church. The king, for a time, was inclined to listen to these
proposals, but being influenced again by the party of Clement VII., he
ordered the chancellor to prevent the university from taking any further
step in the matter. All petitions directed to the king for a revocation of
the sentence proving futile, the university proceeded to apply means of
coercion. All lectures, sermons, and public functions whatsoever were
suspended until it should have gained a redress of its grievances.

In the year 1409 the Synod of Pisa was opened to take the long-desired
steps against the schism. The universities were strongly represented by
their delegates, not the least in importance among the venerable
constituencies of the Occidental Church, the number of doctors falling
little short of a thousand. Reformation of the church in its head and
members, and a revision of its discipline and hierarchic organization, were
loudly proclaimed by the representatives of the universities, foremost
among all by Gerson, the chancellor of Paris, the most brilliant star in
the splendid array of venerable doctors and prelates of the church.

Mediaeval universities were truly _universal_ in their character,
being united by one language, literature, and faith. With the sixteenth
century nationalities were growing into overwhelming dimensions; national
literature rose in defiant rivalry and joined revived antiquity in marked
hostility against the scions of scholasticism; and, to give the final
stroke, the unity of faith was crumbling; piecemeal under the reforming
spirit of the age. The ties which had bound mediaeval universities to each
other and to their common centre were sundered. Some became defunct; others
led a precarious existence; all had a hard and troublesome time of it--a
fact touchingly recorded in the annals of Vienna: "Ann. 1528: Propter
ruinam universitatis nullus incorporatus est."

{227}

This sad epitaph might have been written over the portals of more than one
university and public school by the middle of the sixteenth century.


  Literature.

  Bulaerus, "Historia Universitatis Paris." Paris, 1665

  Wood, "Historia et Antiquitates Universitatis Oxon." Ox., 1668.

  Herrnanni Corringii Opera (tom. v., "Antiquitatis, Academicae"). 1730.

  Guia, "Historia de las Universidades, Colegios, Academias y demas Cuerpos
  Literarios de España," etc. Madrid, 1786.

  Huber, "Die Englischen Universitäten." Cassel, 1839.

  Dyer, "History of the University Colleges of Cambridge."

  Dyer, "The Privileges of the University of Cambridge."

  Fabranius, "Historia Academiae Pisanae." 1791.

  Vincenzio Bini, "Memorie Istoriche della Perugina Università." Perug.,
  1816.

  Francesco Colie, "Storia dello Studio di Padova" Pad., 1825.

  Pietro Napoli-Signorelii, "Vicende della Coltura nolle Due Sicilie."
  Napoli, 1784.

  Jacobus Faccioiatus, "Fasti Gymnasil Patavini," Patav., 1757.

  Serafino Mazetti, "Memorie Storiche sopra l'Università di Bologna."
  Bolog., 1840.

  G. Origila, "Storia dello Studio di Napoli." Nap., 1753.

  F. M. Renazzi, "Storia dell' Università de Roma." Roma, 1804.

  J. Bouillard, "Histoire de l'Abbaye Royale de St. Germain des Prez."
  Paris, 1724.

  J. E. Bimbenet, "Histoire de l'Université de Lois d'Orléans." Paris,
  1850.

  F. Nève, "Le College des Trois Langues à l'Université de Louvain."
  Bruxelles, 1856.

  Meiners, "Verfassung und Verwaltung Deutscher Universitäten." Göttingen,
  1831.

  R. Kink, "Geschichte der Kalserlichen Universität zu Wein."  Wein, 1854.

  Walaszki, "Conspectus Relpublicae Literariae in Hungaria." Budae, 1808.

  C. J. Hefele, "Der Cardinal Ximenes." Tübingen, 1851.

  J. P. Charpentier, "Histoire de la Rennissance des Lettres en Europe."
  Paris, 1843.

  S. Voight, "Die Wiederbelebung des Classischen Alterthums." Berlin, 1859

  J. B. Schwab, "Johannes Gerson," etc. Würsburg, 1858.

  G. Tiraboschi, "Storia della Letteratura Italians." Venezia, 1828.


------

  Original.


  The Lady of La Garaye. [Footnote 49]

    [Footnote 49: The Lady of La Garaye. By the Hon. Mrs. Norton. 12mo, pp.
    115. New-York: Anson D. F. Randolph.]


Two hundred years ago there dwelt in the lordly castle of Dinan, in
Brittany, the chivalric Claud Marot, Count de la Garaye, and his gracious
lady. Its fortress-like walls and majestic battlements reared themselves
against the sky and frowned upon the woods and vales around as if with
conscious dignity and power. Fair Dinan's town nestled in its protecting
shadow as a gentle maid might seek security beside the burly form of some
rough-appearing but tender-hearted giant. The porter kept its gates with a
jealous yet a kindly eye, as should befit the keeper of his master's home,
which was at once the sanctuary of his knightly honor and the hall of his
knightly bounty. The gray-haired old seneschal, with shoulders slightly
stooped by age and reverence, met the courtly guests, and bowed them
welcome with a paternal smile and bustling orders to the underlings to
prepare all needful things for their better cheer. The courtyard echoed to
the baying of the hounds all eager for the chase, and men at arms in
troublous times assembled here, mustered by the doughty

       "Captains, then of warlike fame,
  Clanking and glittering as they came."

{228}

A retinue of well-fed servants and buxom maids prepared the goodly feast,
and ordered well the halls and chambers with their quaint and comfortable
furniture. Its noble master and mistress held sway within their castle with
fitting grandeur of demeanor, albeit with that graciousness which marks the
gentlefolk. Honored by all the country round, rich in worldly goods, yet
richer in virtue, happy in each other's love, the young count and his lady
had but one thing to mourn, and that was that God had left them childless.
A cruel accident banished for ever all hope of any heir: and so they lived
and died, yet leaving a name behind them "better than sons and daughters;"
and on this our English poetess has weaved a poem of surpassing beauty. We
propose to present some idea of it to our readers, merely saying by way of
preface that if anyone will read it as it is, he may dispense himself the
further perusal of this article, which cannot convey in partial extracts
that charm which pervades these flowing pages when undisturbed by the rude
comments of a stranger.

The poem opens with the preparations for the chase, in which the lady is to
take a part, and at once the noble pair are described to us:

  "Cheerful the host, whatever sport befalls,
   Cheerful and courteous, full of manly grace,
   His heart's frank welcome written in his face;
   So eager, that his pleasure never cloys,
   But glad to share whatever he enjoys;
   Rich, liberal, gaily dressed, of noble mien;
   Clear eyes--full, curving mouth--and brow serene;
   Master of speech in many a foreign tongue,
   And famed for feats of arms, although too young;
   Dexterous in fencing, skills in horsemanship--
   His voice and hand preferred to spur or whip;
   Quick at a jest and smiling repartee,
   With a sweet laugh that sounded frank and free,
   But holding satire an accursed thing,
   A poisoned javelin or a serpent's sting;
   Pitiful to the poor; of courage high;
   A soul that could all turns of fate defy;
   Gentle to woman; reverent to old age."--

We hasten at once to add the second portrait, painted with a delicacy of
outline and warmth of coloring which display the touch of the master hand:

  "Like a sweet picture doth the ladies stand,
   Still blushing as she bows; one tiny hand,
   Hid by a pearl-embroidered gauntlet, holds
   Her whip, and her long robe's exuberant folds.
   The other hand is bare, and from her eyes
   Shades now and then the sun, or softly lies,
   With a caressing touch, upon the neck
   Of the dear glossy steed she loves to deck
   With saddle-housings worked in golden thread,
   And golden bands upon his noble head.
   White is the little hand whose taper fingers
   Smooth his fine coat--and still the lady lingers,
   Leaning against his side; nor lifts her head,
   But gently turns as gathering footsteps tread;
   Reminding you of doves with shifting throats,
   Brooding in sunshine by their sheltering cotes.
   Under her plumèd hat her wealth of curls
   Falls down in golden links among pearls,
   And the rich purple of her velvet vest
   Slims the young waist and rounds the graceful breast."

The invited guests having all arrived, the merry party set off with cheers
and laughter, little dreaming of the sad ending of so joyful a day. The
game secured, Count Claud and his lady, returning together, meet with a
roaring stream over which they must leap their horses:

  "Across the water full of peakèd stones--
   Across the water where it chafes and moans--
   Across the water at its widest part--
   Which wilt thou leap, O lady of brave heart?"

Now comes one of the finest passages in the whole volume. Who can read it
without finding at the last line that he has been holding his breath?

  "He rides--reins in--looks down the torrent's course,
   Pats the sleek neck of his sure-footed horse--
   Stops--measures spaces with his eagle eye,
   Tries a new track, and yet returns to try.
   Sudden, while pausing at the very brink,
   The damp, leaf-covered ground appears to sink,
   And keen instinct of the wise dumb brute
   Escapes the yielding earth, the slippery root;
   With a wild effort as if taking wing,
   The monstrous gap he clears with one safe spring;
   Reaches--(and barely reaches)--past the roar
   Of the wild stream, the further lower shore--
   Scrambles--recovers--rears--and panting stands
   Safe 'neath his masters nerveless, trembling hands."

But one word mars the power of these lines; the word _safe_ in the
line,

   "The monstrous gap he clears with one safe spring."

The safety of the unexpected leap is told us just one instant too soon.
There is an indescribable pleasure derived by the mind in being held in
suspense in the contemplation of one passing through imminent perils, and
that suspense cannot be broken, though it were but for the short time that
one takes to pass from one side of the page to the other, without loss of
power in the description, and of interest to the reader.

{229}

But the lady! will she attempt to follow? Did she not mark his hair-breadth
escape? The confusion of thought in the mind of the count caused by his own
peril, the sudden, unlooked-for leap, the fear lest his wife should try to
follow ere he can turn to warn her of the danger, the dumb horror which
seizes him as he sees her horse in the air leaping to his certain death;
are told in a few rapid lines, and then follows the thrilling tableau:

  "Forward they leaped! They leaped--a colored flash
  Of life and beauty. Hark! A sudden crash--
  Blent with that dreadful sound, a man's sharp cry--
  Prone--'neath the crumbling bank--the horse and lady lie!"

Like a madman he rushes to her relief, clambering "as some wild ape" from
branch to branch, trampling the lithe saplings under foot with giant tread.
His love, his fear, his trembling excitement are told in one line:

  "The strength is in his heart of twenty lives."

What a depth of meaning there is in that one sentence, and how happy the
choice of words. When, in reading, we came upon the word _heart_ where
we expected to find "arm" or "frame," or some similar term which would
express the increase of muscular and nervous power consequent upon strong
mental emotion, we confess to having been startled by its originality, and
we admire the line as it stands as a master stroke of true poetic genius.

Claud is so shocked at finding his beautiful and passionately loved wife
apparently dead that he is struck deaf and dumb with grief. The noise of
the passing hunt, the baying of the hounds, the cheery calls of the
huntsmen, and shouts of the merry guests he neither hears nor heeds. It is
some time ere he realizes the terrible accident. At last the thoughts shape
themselves in his disordered brain, and, with one wild glance at her
prostrate form, be catches her in his arms, and

    "Parts the masses of her golden hair,
  He lifts her, helpless, with a shuddering care,
  He looks into her face with awe-struck eyes:
  She dies--the darling of his soul--she dies!"

Then follows one of those passages marked by that deep pathos for which
this poem is so remarkable:

  "You might have heard, through that thought's fearful shock,
   The beating of his heart, like some huge clock;
   And then the strong pulse falter and stand still
   When lifted from that fear with sudden thrill
   He bent to catch faint murmurs of his name,
   Which from those blanched lips low and trembling came:
   'O Claud!' She said: no more--
                            But never yet,
   Through all the loving days since first they met,
   Leaped his heart's blood with such a yearning vow
   That she was all in all to him, as now."

Some passing herdsmen came to their relief, and the bruised and corpse-like
form of the lady is borne back to the castle on a rude litter of branches.
It is impossible for us to refrain giving the strongly drawn contrast in
the following description:

  "The starry lights shine forth from tower and fall,
   Stream through the gateway, glimmer on the wall,
   And the loud pleasant stir of busy men
   In courtyard and in stables sounds again.
   And through the windows, as that death-bier passes,
   They see the shining of the ruby glasses
   Set at brief intervals for many a guest
   Prepared to share the laugh, the song, the jest;
   Prepared to drink, with many a courtly phrase,
   Their host and hostess--' Health to the Garayes!'
   Health to the slender, lithe, yet stalwart frame
   Of Claud Marot--count of that noble name;
   Health to the lovely countess: health--to her!
   _Scarce seems she now with faintest breath to stir._"

And thus the first part of this exquisite poem ends. The second part is the
"Convalescence" of the wounded lady. Her life returns, but she learns that
she is an incurable invalid, that while life lasts she must remain maimed
and sick, and, most cruel thought of all,

  "Never could she, at close or some long day
   Of pain that strove with hope, exulting lay
   A tiny new-born infant on her breast."

She draws her fate from the unwilling lips of the physician, in whose
friendly eyes the tears are glimmering as he pronounces

  "The doom that sounds to her like funeral bells."

And now she hurriedly glances in her mind at all the dreaded consequences,
among which arises the jealous fear lest she should lose the love of her
beloved Claud. His wife, indeed, but no longer his companion; only to have
the hours his pity spared. Heart-broken and crushed, she murmurs against
the holy will of God and prays for death.

{230}

The poetess here introduces a thought which shows her deep acquaintance
with the human heart. We shrink from sympathy for our wounded pride, and
strive to smile when our hearts are aching:

  "Wan Shine such smiles; as the evening sunlight falls
   On a deserted house whose empty walls
   No longer echo to the children's play,
   Or voice of ruined inmates fled away;
   Where wintry winds alone, with idle state,
   Move the slow swinging of its rusty gate."

Her high-souled husband grieves to see her drooping under the jealous loss
of her strength and beauty, and, in his undoubting love, unable to suspect
that she fears to lose that love,

      "Wonders evermore that beauty's loss
  To such a soul should seem so sore a cross,
  Until one evening in that quiet hush
  That lulls the failing day, when all the gush
  Of various sounds seem buried with the sun,
  He told his thought.
                   As winter streamlets run,
  Freed by some sudden thaw, and swift make way
  Into the natural channels where they play,
  So leaped her young heart to his tender tone,
  So answering to his warmth, resumed her own;
  And all her doubt and all her grief confest."

The unburdening of the sore, doubting heart and the tender, comforting,
loving assurance of Claud is one of the choicest scenes in the poem. Never
did youthful lover pour forth more impassioned utterances than fell from
the lips of that true man and noble husband. He tells her that her beauty
was but one of the "bright ripples dancing to the sun" glancing upon the
silver stream of his happy life, and continues the metaphor:

  "River of all my hopes thou wert and art;
   The current of thy being bears my heart."

And last of all, when she, still incredulous of his unswerving faith, sighs
her girlish doubts and moans for death, he with full heart and fervent
words repeats his tale of love and makes profession of love's boldest
offering, the sacrifice of his life, if it were the will of God, could she
return again "to walk in beauty as she did before;" and then he whispers to
her the thought that has arisen in his soul to answer the "wherefore" of
the dreadful accident:

  "It may be God, saw our careless life,
   Not sinful, yet not blameless, my sweet wife
   (Since all we thought of in our youth's bright May
   Was but the coming joy from day to day),
   Hath blotted out all joy to bid us learn
   Now this is not our home; and make us turn
   From the enchanted earth, where much was given,
   To higher aims and a forgotten heaven."

It is no little comfort in this age of sensual worldliness and practical
unbelief in the providence of God to find the voice of Christian philosophy
sounding yet clear above the grovelling utterances of a too often degraded
muse.

The third part of our poem continues and exemplifies this thought. This
world is God's world; we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of
his hand. Bereavement, pain, unforeseen and unexplained sorrow belong to
life, and play their part in schooling the soul to higher aims. The heart
must learn to wait on God. "Peace will come in that day which is known unto
the Lord," says the author of the Imitation of Christ. We, too, can bring
our own experience to the proof, and know that a stronger hand and a wiser
heart has led and loved us. We quote but one extract from this third part;
it is the summary of the whole:

  "All that our wisdom knows, or ever can,
   Is this: that God hath pity upon man;
   And when his Spirit shines in Holy Writ,
   The great word COMFORTER comes after it."

To these sorrowing ones, bending beneath the cruel blow, and mourning over
blighted hopes, God sent a friend; His friend, the minister of His counsel
and His comfort, a holy monk. Let us transcribe his portrait:

  "Tender his words and eloquently wise;
   Mild pure fervor of his watchful eyes;
   Meet with serenity of constant prayer
   The luminous forehead, high and broad and bare;
   The thin mouth, though not passionless, yet still;
   With the sweet calm that speaks an angel's will,
   Resolving service to his God's behest,
   And ever musing how to serve him best.
   Not old, nor young; with manhood's gentlest grace;
   Pale to transparency the pensive face,
   Pale not with sickness, but with studious thought,
   The body tasked, the fine mind overwrought;
   With something faint and fragile in the whole,
   As though 'twere but a lamp will hold the soul."

Words of holy counsel, lessons of humble sanctifying obedience, mingled
with mild reproof, yet full of the deepest and friendliest sympathy, fall
from the lips of the good priest and charm the unquiet spirit to rest.
{231}
Such words had doubtless fallen upon her ears before, but she had only been
a hearer; now she was perforce a learner. How natural her complaint:

  "What had I done to earn such fate from Heaven?"

And how deftly does the priest, wise in the counsels of God and in the
sorrows of the human heart, catch up the text and bring its argument home
to the questioner! "What have the poor done?" he asks in return, "what has
the babe done that is just born to die? .... what has the idiot done? ....
what have the hard-worked factory girls done?" (the verse says not
_factory_ girls, but implies it, a pretty little anachronism which we
blame not, for the lesson of the Lady of La Garaye was meant for our own
times.).... "what have the slandered innocent done?" And then he tells her,
in strong contrast to her own luxury and ease, of the number who sicken and
die, forsaken, uncheered by kind words, unaided by kind hands, wanting the
commonest comforts of health which become craving necessities for the sick,
and bids her know that

 "What we must suffer proves not what was done."

The lady listened, and in her heart arose the wish to help the sick, the
aged, and the poor. God had chosen her to be one of his angels of mercy to
the suffering, and a minister of benediction to those that mourn. And,
choosing her, he called her to the trial, and led her, all unwilling yet,
through the fire of affliction. How her wish was accomplished and what
fruit it bore is quickly told:

  "Where once the shifting throng
   Of merry playmates met, with dance and song,
   Long rows of simple beds the place proclaim
   A hospital, in all things but the name.
   In that same castle where the lavish feast
   Lay spread that fatal night, for many a guest
   The sickly poor are fed! Beneath that porch
   Where Claud shed tears that seemed the lids to scorch,
   Seeing her broken beauty carried by,
   Like a crushed flower that now has but to die,
   The self-same Claud now stands and helps to guide
   Some ragged wretch to rest and warm inside.
   But most to those, the hopeless ones, on whom,
   Early or late, her own sad-spoken doom
   Hath been pronounced--the incurables--she spends
   Her lavish pity, and their couch attends.
   Her home is made their home; her wealth their dole;
   Her busy courtyard hears no more the roll
   Of gilded vehicles, or pawing steeds,
   But feeble steps of those whose bitter needs
   Are their sole passport. Through that gateway press
   All varying forms of sickness and distress,
   And many a poor worn face that hath not smiled
   For years; and many a crippled child,
   Blesses the tall white portal where they stand,
   And the dear lady of the liberal hand."

Nothing, we think, could be added to increase the beauty of this picture.
In noting the impressions made by the perusal of this charming poem one
cannot help calling attention to its healthful, elevated tone, and the
purity of thought which pervades the whole. It is a gem of poetic art which
all lovers of the true and beautiful must admire. It were needless to say
that even by our copious extracts we have not presented all that is worthy
of comment. There are very few verses, indeed, in the poem which do not
possess equal merit with those of our quotations. The deep pathos which
reigns throughout as its flowing rhythm glides smoothly along, is like the
murmuring of a brook through quiet woods on a sunny day, compelling the
chance wanderer to stop and pass a dreamy hour away by its leafy banks.
There is a singular air of peacefulness and repose pervading it that we
think to be its peculiar charm, and we envy not the reader who can rise
from its perusal without feeling that he has enjoyed a delightful feast for
both mind and heart.

--------

{232}

  Original

  Procession in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.


A pilgrimage to the places consecrated by the events in the life of our
Lord is, of necessity, full of the deepest interest. However familiar we
may be at home with the narrative of all that Christ has done for us, that
mighty work of love is invested with new force and power when we kneel at
the places where it was wrought--when we meditate on the incidents of our
redemption on the spot where it was effected. The offices of the Passion,
in Jerusalem, have, therefore, a more striking character than in other
lands. The ritual observances of the Catholic Church, everywhere so
touching, have in the Holy City the additional impressiveness of recalling
to memory events in the places where they occurred.

Every day in the year there is a procession in the church of the Holy
Sepulchre, which is one of almost startling solemnity. Those who have been
privileged to take part in it can never forget the emotions it excited, and
which are renewed daily as the function proceeds. Although no language can
adequately express these feelings, yet a description of the procession
itself, with a reference to the circumstances in which it is made, may be
of advantage, and aid, however imperfectly, in the understanding of this
most impressive devotion. The detail of a liturgical service involving many
repetitions and sentences in Latin is necessarily somewhat dull; yet it is
hoped that the unusual character of the office about to be described will
have sufficient attraction for the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD to induce
them to peruse these pages. Should the writer furnish other sketches of his
pilgrimage to the Holy Land, they will probably be found of more general
interest than this paper.

Late in the afternoon, compline being finished, the procession is formed in
the chapel of the Franciscans. Each person is furnished with a lighted
taper, which serves the double purpose of honoring the function and for
reading the book of the hymns and prayers. The first time anyone is present
a large wax candle is given him, and this he is permitted to take away as a
remembrance of the office; on subsequent occasions the smaller one is used,
which burns until the close of the service. The church being dark, it is
difficult to read without this light, which also adds much to the
impressiveness of the scene as the line of pilgrims stretches along. The
number of persons in the procession varies, being, of course, larger when
many strangers are in Jerusalem, as is the case at Easter. Some of the
Catholics of the city, and occasionally the sisters of St. Joseph, are
present, the priests and brothers of the convent being always there; thus
the whole office has dignity and is reverently gone through.

While on the way from one station to the next, a hymn is sung; when the
place is reached, incense is used; the people all kneel; a versicle and
responsory are said, followed by a prayer, concluding with _Our
Father_ and _Hail Mary_. Of course, the whole office is in Latin,
and thus to ecclesiastics from every part of the world it has a familiar
appearance.

Beginning in the Latin chapel, in front of the altar of the blessed
sacrament, the function opens with the antiphon, _O sacrum convivium_,
and the versicle, "Thou hast given them bread from heaven, having in itself
all sweetness." The prayer of the blessed sacrament, _Deus qui nobis_,
is said. In the same chapel, a few feet to the right of the high altar, is
the station and altar of the column of the flagellation of Christ.
{233}
A recess in the wall contains a portion of the column behind a grating of
iron. In going to this, the hymn _Trophos a crucis mystica_ is sung;
the antiphon and prayer, "Pilate took Jesus and scourged him, and delivered
him to them that he might be crucified. I was scourged all the day, and my
castigation was in the morning, Look down, we beseech thee, O Lord, upon
thy church which thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood, that it, being
always enriched, may obtain eternal rewards: who livest and reigneet
forever and ever. Amen."

With the hymn _Jam crucem propter hominem_ the procession goes to the
prison of Christ, a dark place where, according to tradition, our Lord was
detained some time. Antiphon and prayer: "I brought thee forth from the
captivity of Egypt, Pharaoh being drowned in the Red sea, and thou hast
delivered me to this dark prison. Thou, O Lord, hast broken my bonds; to
thee will I sacrifice the host of praise. Loosen, we beseech thee, O Lord,
the chains of our sins, that, having been freed from the prison of this
body, we may behold the light of glory, through Christ our Lord. Amen."

The hymn _Ecce nunc Joseph mysticus_ is sung as the procession moves
to the place of the division of the garments of Christ. Antiphon, etc.:
"The soldiers, therefore, when they had crucified Jesus, took his vestments
and made HERE four parts, to each soldier a part, and the tunic. They
divided HERE my vestments for themselves, and on my clothing they cast
lots. O God, who, through thine only-begotten Son, didst confer the
remedies of salvation on a fallen world, grant to us that, being freed from
vices and adorned with virtues, we may be presented in white clothing
before the tribunal of thy majesty. Amen."

The procession, chanting the hymn _Crux fidelis inter omnes_, now
descends a flight of stone steps, passes through the chapel of St. Helena,
and down a second flight to the place where was found the holy cross, the
reward of the pious search of the mother of Constantine. Antiphon, etc.: "O
blessed cross, which alone wast worthy to bear the Lord and King of heaven!
Alleluia. This sign of the cross shall be in heaven when the Lord shall
come to judgment. O God, who didst HERE raise up a miracle of thy passion
in the finding of the glorious cross of salvation, grant that by the price
of this wood we may obtain the favor of eternal life. Amen."

Returning now to the chapel of St. Helena, with the hymn, _Fortem virili
pectore laudemus omnes Helenam_, the people kneel in the centre of this
edifice, while the priest who leads the devotion goes to the chief altar,
which is near the place where the saintly empress waited while the search
for the holy cross was made below. This chapel belongs to the Armenians.
The antiphon, etc., are as follows: "Helena, the mother of Constantine,
came to Jerusalem that she might find the cross of the Lord. Alleluia! Pray
for us, O blessed Helena, that we may be made worthy of the promises of
Christ. Mercifully hear the prayers of thy family, O Lord, that as it
everywhere rejoices in the fervid study of blessed Helena, who here
joyfully found the wood of the holy cross so much desired, so, by her
merits and prayers, it may be able always to rejoice in heavenly glory.
Amen."

The next station is that of the column of the crowning and mocking, in
going to which the hymn _Caoetus piorum exeat_ is sung. Antiphon,
etc.: "I gave thee a royal sceptre, and thou hast put on my head a crown of
thorns. Plaiting a crown of thorns, they put it on his head. O God, who, in
the humility of thy Son, hast lifted up the fallen world, mercifully grant
that, casting away the crown of pride, we may obtain the unfading crown of
glory, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

The procession now ascends the flight of step leading to Calvary, going
first to the place of the crucifixion, properly so called, where our Lord
was nailed to the cross.
{234}
The hymn _Vexilla Regis prodeunt_ is sung on the way from the place of
mocking. The antiphon, etc.: "They took Jesus, and led him forth, bearing
his cross: he went to the place called Calvary, in the Hebrew Golgotha,
where they crucified him. HERE they pierced my hands and my feet, and they
numbered all my bones. O Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, who, for
the salvation of the world, at the sixth hour, didst ascend the gibbet of
the cross on THIS Calvary, and for the redemption of our sins didst shed
thy precious blood, we humbly beseech thee that after our death thou mayest
grant to us joyfully to enter the gate of paradise: who livest and reignest
for ever and ever. Amen."

A few steps to the left of this place is the spot where the cross was set
up, and where the great High Priest offered the sacrifice which taketh away
the sin of the world. Going to this, the hymn _Lustris sex qui jam
peractis_ is sung, the second verse of which recounts, word by word,
some of the incidents of the gospel narrative:

  "Hic acetum, fel, arundo,
   Sputa, clavi, lancea,
   Mite corpus perforatur,
   Sanguis, unda profluit:
   Terra, pontus, astra, mundus
   Quo lavantur flumine!"

The antiphon, etc.: "Now it was about the sixth hour, and darkness was over
all the land even to the ninth hour; and the sun was darkened, and the veil
or the temple was rent in the midst; and Jesus, crying with a loud voice,
said, 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit;' and, saying these
words, he HERE expired. We adore thee, O Christ, and we bless thee because
by thy holy cross thou didst HERE redeem the world." The prayer (said in a
low voice): "Look down, we beseech thee, O Jesus, upon this thy family for
which our Lord Jesus Christ did not hesitate to be delivered into the hands
of the executioners and made to undergo the torment of the cross: who with
thee liveth and reigneth, world without end. Amen."

Chanting the hymn _Pange lingua gloriosi_, the priests and people now
descend to the stone of unction, where the Redeemer was wrapped in fine
linen after he had been taken down from the cross. This is midway between
Calvary and the scpulchre, and on a level with the floor of the great
church and the holy tomb. The nine verses of the hymn admirably express the
thoughts and feelings which crowd the mind and heart. Redemption is
accomplished, and through Christ's death we live. Antiphon, etc.: "Joseph
and Nicodemus took the body of Jesus, and HERE bound it in linen with
spices, as is the custom of the Jews to bury. Thy name is as oil poured
out; therefore have the young loved thee. O Lord Jesus Christ, who,
condescending to the devotion of thy faithful in thy most holy body, didst
permit it HERE to be anointed by them, that they might reverence thee the
true God, King, and Priest, grant that by the unction of thy grace our
hearts may be preserved from all infection of sin: who livest and reignest
for ever and ever. Amen."

The joyful hymn _Aurora lucis rutilat_ is sung as the procession moves
on to the most glorious scpulchre where was laid the Hope of the world, and
whence he rose on Easter morn, triumphant over death and the grave.
Antiphon, etc.: "The angel here said to the women, 'Fear not; ye seek Jesus
of Nazareth crucified; he hath risen, he is not here: behold the place
where they laid him. Alleluia.' The Lord hath risen from this sepulchre,
alleluia, who for us hung upon the wood, alleluia. O God, who by the
triumphant resurrection of thy Son, didst here bestow the remedy of
salvation on the world, and, having conquered death, hast unlocked for us
the way of eternal life, by thine assistance further our earnest desires
which thou hast put into our hearts; through the same Christ our Lord.
Amen."

{235}

Then, going to the place where Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene in the
habit of the gardener, the hymn _Christus triumphum gloriae_ is sung.
Antiphon, etc.: "Jesus, rising early on the morning of the first day of the
week, appeared HERE to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven
demons, 'Mary, touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.' We
beseech thee, O Lord God, that we may be helped by the prayers of blessed
Mary Magdalene, at whose entreaty thou didst not only raise up her brother
who had been four days dead, but didst show thyself after thy resurrection
here as the living Lord: who livest and reignest for ever and ever. Amen."

Lastly, going to the place where, according to tradition, Jesus appeared to
his holy mother (this station being in the chapel of the Latins, in front
of the altar of the blessed sacrament), the procession returns to the spot
whence it started, singing the hymn,

  "Jesum Christum crucifixum
   Ob peccatorum crimina,
   Hunc vidisti et flevisti,
   O gloriosa Domina," etc.

The above is an outline of the procession which is made every day in the
church of the Holy Sepulchre. But to have a full understanding of its
impressiveness, one must be in Jerusalem, and take part in it. In other
countries, when reading of the passion and death of our Lord, we are left
to imagine the appearance of places which are thousands of miles away; and
this consciousness of distance will ever hinder that vivid realization of
the incidents which may be had on the spot where they occurred. When the
word HIC (here) is said by the officiating priest, all bow down and kiss
the floor; and it is enough to melt a heart of stone to be so close to
these most sacred spots when the mention of what our Lord has here done and
suffered for our sins is made. There is no attempt to work upon the
imagination or excite the feelings. The singing and praying are in a
natural but reverent tone. It is felt that the devout Christian needs only
to be _here_ when the prayers are said, to have his heart subdued and
filled with penitence and adoring gratitude and love.


------

  Original.

  At Threescore.


  There was but one in all the world,
                Fond heart,
  To whom thou gayest all, nor kept
                A part;
        And that was John.
  None e'er so gentle, nor so brave as he,
  None other's arm so strong or sweet to me
        To lean upon.

  'Twas down upon the ocean shore
                One day,
  The heart I once had some one took
                Away;
        And that was John.
  Strange moment! for it seemèd then to me
  As if the rocks and sands and clouds and sea
        And all were gone.

{236}

  You understand, I do not mean
                Quite all:
  Some one was there, so handsome, straight,
                And tall;
        And that was John:
  But he was all to me, and nothing there
  Nor aught in this wide world with him could bear
        Comparison.

  Long years have passed, and now my step
                Is slow.
  Though weak his arm, yet strong his heart,
                I know,
        To lean upon.
  Beside me seated in his high-backed chair,
  I see a tall old man with silvered hair;
        And that is John.

  My day of life has always been
                Most bright,
  But now the shadows longer grow,
                And night
        Is coming on.
  I fear it not, for when my course is run,
  I look beyond the grave to meet with One
        More dear than John.


------

    Translated from the Spanish.

    The Revenge Of Conscience.


  Though one brief spring restores to earth the flowers
  Swept from her lap by autumn's stormy hours,
  Back to man's breast a lifetime will not win
  The heart's ease lost through one frail moment's sin.


White as a nest of gulls, in the cleft of a rock on the wild sea-shore,
gleams Cadiz from the concavity of her walls. So audaciously is she seated
in the very midst of the billows that the land reaches out an arm to retain
her. This slender arm of stone and sand, wearing La Cortadura, a fortress
constructed during the glorious war of independence, as a bracelet,
separates the violent waves of the ocean from the tranquil waters of the
harbor, and conducts to the city of San Fernando, which, situated in the
curve of the bay, opens its dock-yards of La Carraca as hospitals to the
vessels that return home, maltreated and bruised, from their perilous
expeditions.

Poor wanderers, to whom the tempests are ever repeating what the blasts of
the world unceasingly say to mortals, "On, on!" When they reach their
country, they lay hold of her with their anchors, as children clasp the
necks of their mothers with their little hands.

{237}

Beyond the city of San Fernando, the beautiful and worthy neighbor of
Cadiz, with its splendid Calle Larga, and its houses solid and shining as
if built of massive silver, and beyond the bridge Zuazo, so ancient that
its construction is attributed to the Phoenicians, the road divides into
two branches the one on the left continuing to follow the curve of the bay,
and that on the right taking the direction of Chiclana. It enters this
pleasant town through a grove of white poplars, which, settled like hoary
patriarchs in the midst of green fields, seem by their whisperings to be
encouraging the weaker plants to strengthen themselves and stand like them
against the heavy south-west winds. The town is large, and divided into two
parts by the river Liro.

From two neighboring heights it was overlooked in former times by a Moorish
tower on the one, and a Christian chapel on the other; symbols of its past
and present. Within a few years the tower has disappeared and the chapel
has become a ruin.

  There was a temple and an altar, where
  The lonely heart might weep and lay its care:
  I wept. Once more I passed that way,
  And it was fallen to decay:
  Whereat I wept again!

The chapel was under the invocation of St. Anna. It was round and encircled
by a colonnade, which commanded the view, in all directions, of a
magnificent landscape.

At the foot of the isolated and abandoned tower lay a cemetery. Mouldering
humanity creeping sympathetically into the shadow of the decaying ruin.
This tower--this seal of stone upon the archives of the place; this
inheritance of generations, which the district had guarded like the remains
of a dead chief, embalmed by the aroma of the flowers of the field; this
austere ruin, which had no longer any relations except with the departed,
who were turning to skeletons at its feet; with the birds of night which
hid themselves in its obscure recesses from the noise and light of day, and
with the winds that came to moan sadly through its branches--this
inoffensive tower could not escape modern vandalism.

Neither respect for the memories it evoked, nor reverence for the burial
place it so appropriately guarded, nor the romantic in its aspect, nor the
historic in its origin, could avail it. They demolished it under the sage
protest that it was "ruinous." A ruin "ruinous!" A tower that bore the
centuries as you wear days, "ruinous, ruinous!" That petrified mass which
would have outlasted all your constructions of wood and clay!

The chapel, also, closed and forsaken, has become the prey of destruction,
and its noble colonnade has fallen. Groves, convents, feudal castles, and
palaces, the very ruins are disappearing, and they are not even building
factories or planting orchards where they stood; to clothe the noble matron
Spain, at least with muslin and flowers, instead of the tissues and jewels
of which they despoil her. What, then, will remain to us? Pastures wherein
to breed the ferocious beast, whose contests afford the refined and gentle
diversion that enjoys, above all others, the favor of the people. My God!
can it be that the natural ferocity and cruelty of man, like the atmosphere
that discharges its electricity in thunder, lightning, and tempest, must
have vent and expression?

In the times when Cadiz was the Rothschild among cities, times in which,
according to strangers of note and credibility, her merchants lived with
the pomp and splendor of ambassadors of kings, the greater part of them had
in Chiclana country houses, built and furnished with marvellous richness
and taste. Tarnished vestiges still remain of that elegant luxury to which
the coming of Napoleon's Frenchmen gave the death-blow.

In the present epoch, in which we often see fulfilled the saying, "Ramparts
fall and dust heaps exalt themselves," when old men recount the splendors
of those days, _new_--we will not say _young_--men receive their
stories as tales of the thousand and one nights, with incredulity and
criticism alternating upon their lips.

{238}

In their opinion, gallantry, generosity, and munificence afford material
for an appendix to Don Quixote as fantastic virtues which can only exist in
over-excited brains.

At the close of the last century, when the events which we are about to
relate began to take place, Chiclana was at the zenith of her splendor.
Cadiz shone with gold, and, like the sun, shed glory upon all her environs.
Nowhere now do they throw away doubloons as they then did here, with the
simple indifference of children tossing soap-bubbles into the air, and the
lordliness of princes who neither count nor value what they spend in
compliment to others. In this epoch occurred the incident which is told of
the celebrated Duchess of Alba and the youth, who, seeing twenty thousand
dollars upon her table, observed, in her hearing, that this sum, which to
her was such a trifle, would make a man's fortune. "Would you like to have
it?" asked the duchess. The youth admitted that he would. The lady sent him
the money and--closed her doors upon him. In these days the contrary would
have succeeded. The money would not have been given, nor would the doors
have been closed upon one who, by any means whatever, had acquired it.

In one of the wide, cheerful streets of the above-named town stood a house
of more distinguished appearance than the others, though it consisted of
but one story, which was somewhat elevated from the ground and reached by a
flight of marble steps. The door was of mahogany, studded with great nails
of shining metal. The front of the house was surmounted by the arms of the
family, carved in marble. Nobility and riches seek each other; in former
times they were sisters, in these they are not even cousins. The house
porch, the court, and all the apartments, even to the inferior offices,
were paved with magnificent blocks of blue and white marble. Columns of
jasper supported the four galleries which surrounded the court, and in the
area, in the midst of towering plants and alabaster statues, a fountain
flowed unceasingly, singing the same pure and infantile melody to the bud
half opened in hope, and to the flower falling in leafless despair. Between
column and column, embowered in green and flowery tapestries of jassamine
and musk rose, hung the gilded cages of bright-hued birds. A canvas awning,
cut in points at the edges, and bound with red, shaded the court and
preserved its refreshing coolness. The walls of the parlor were of white
stucco upon a blue ground; the chairs and sofa were made of ebony, with
heavy silver ornaments and coverings of azure _gros de Tours_. The
furniture was of slight and simple form and in the Greek style, which the
Revolution had brought into favor, making it the order of the day, as it
had also introduced the Phrygian cap, the names of Antenor, Anacharsis,
Themistocles, Aristides, and other things less inoffensive than these. Upon
the table, which was supported by four straight-fluted legs, stood a clock,
constructed of white marble and bronze. At that time the taste for the
pastoral and idyllic in art had passed, dispossessed by the grave and
classic allegories which were presently to be superseded by the cannon,
banners, and warlike laurel wreaths with which Napoleon would dispel in
wide air the ardor and zeal of the Revolution. In its turn the epoch of the
Restoration, which put an end to the supremacy of the sword as the sword
had terminated the rule of the democracy, brought back monarchical ideas
and religious sentiments with the chivalry, loyalty, and ancient faith
which were to introduce the Romantic in literature and the Gothic in arts
and customs. Following closely upon these came the taste for the fashions
of the times called "of Louis the Fourteenth" and "Louis the Fifteenth."
For men are, like children, enthusiasts of the new, and ever trampling with
contempt upon the idol of the moment before. Shakespeare has said.
"Frailty, thy name is woman!" Well might he have added, "Fickleness, thy
name is man!"

{239}

The clock formed a group, composed of an effigy of time, under the figure
of an old man; two nude young girls with arms interlaced, leaning upon the
old man, and representing innocence and truth; and two other figures,
wrapped in dark veils, symbolizing sin and mystery flying from time, who,
with raised finger, appeared to threaten them. The effigy of time was well
and expressively executed; and when the clear and sonorous voice of the
hour, counting its dead sisters, was added to its expressive gesture, it
seemed like the warning voice of an austere patriarch, and could not fail
to affect him who, meditating upon the sense of the allegory, heard the
measured echo of its strokes. On each side of the clock was a bronze
candlestick, in the form of a negro standing upon a marble pedestal and
adorned with brazen chains. The negro carried upon his head and in his
hands baskets of flowers. In the centres of the flowers the candles were
set. The ceiling was painted to represent light, floating clouds of gray
and white, through which was seen a nymph of the air, apparently holding in
her hands the tasselled cords of azure silk which sustained an alabaster
lamp, destined to filter a light as mild and soft as that of the moon, a
light extremely flattering to female beauty, and therefore adopted for
select reunions. In the middle of the room, upon a mosaic stand, rested a
great glass globe. In it swam fishes of those lovely colors which the water
displays in emulation of the air that has its gorgeous birds, and the earth
that parades its charming flowers. Here they lived, silent and gentle,
unvexed by the circuit which bounded their action, like pretty idiots,
seeing everything with their great eyes, and comprehending nothing. The
globe was surmounted by a smaller one filled with flowers, of which there
was also a profusion arranged in jars in the recesses of the windows. The
windows were hung with lace-edged muslin curtains, like those now used,
except that the muslin was Indian instead of English, and the lace thread,
made by hand, instead of cotton woven. As it was summer time, only a dim
light was allowed to penetrate the drawn blinds. The atmosphere of the
apartment was perfumed with flowers and pastilles of Lima.

Upon the sofa reclined a woman of extraordinary beauty. One alabaster hand,
hidden in a mass of auburn curls, supported her head upon the pillow of the
sofa. A loose cambric dress, adorned with Flanders lace, robed her youthful
and perfect form. Through the lace of her robe just peeped the point of a
little foot encased in a silken stocking and white satin slipper. At that
time no other shoe was used by ladies of distinction upon any occasion, and
luxury reached even to the wearing of lace slippers lined with colored
satin.

The apostles of the last foreign fashion, admirers of the buskin, regard
with sovereign contempt this rich and elegant custom, which, in their eyes,
is guilty of two mortal sins--that of being old-fashioned, and that of
being Spanish. The lady's left hand was adorned with a splendid brilliant,
and held a cambric handkerchief of Mexican embroidery, with which, from
time to time, she dried a tear that slid slowly down her pearly cheek.

The reader thinks that he divines the cause of this solitary tear shed by a
woman, young, beautiful, and surrounded by the evidences of a luxurious and
enviable position. He has decided that it must be the token of wounded
affection, and has guessed wrong. Respect for truth, even at the sacrifice
of admiration for the heroine of our story, obliges us to confess that this
tear was not of love, but of spite. Yes, that brilliant drop, falling from
eyes as blue as the sky of evening, gliding between those long, dark
lashes, and across those delicately glowing cheeks, was the evidence of
spite.

{240}

But before we proceed it is necessary to explain the cause of the ill-humor
of our heroine.


  Chapter II.


The young lady we have been describing was called Ismena, and was the only
child of Don Iago O'Donnell, whose family, in common with many others, had
emigrated from Ireland in the time of William of Orange. After the
capitulation of Limerick, the troops, who belonged to the most noble
families of Ireland, entered the service of France and Spain. Philip the
First, as was to have been expected, welcomed them, and they formed, in
1709, the regiments of Ibernia and Ultonia, and, later, a third called the
Irlanda. These troops were commanded by James Stuart, duke of Berwick,
natural son of James the Second by Arabella Churchill, sister of the famous
Duke of Marlborough. The Duke of Berwick gained the battle of Almansa and
took Barcelona by assault, and the king rewarded his great services with
the dukedoms of Liria and Jerica, and made him a grandee of Spain. This
gallant general had two sons, the elder was naturalized in Spain and
inherited the titles of Berwick, Liria, and Jerica, to which he afterward
united, by his marriage, that of the noble house of Alba, which had
descended to a female. The second son established himself in France, where
his descendants still exist and bear the title of dukes of Fitz-James.

The above-mentioned regiments are represented in our days by the
descendants of the loyal men who composed them, for, as we have been
informed, there are now ninety Irish surnames in the Spanish army, names
which, for their traditional loyalty and bravery, and their hereditary
nobility, honor those who bear them.

Don Iago O'Donnell married a Spanish lady, and his daughter, Ismena, united
in her person the beauty of both types. Her slight and graceful Andalusian
form was clothed in the white rose-tinted skin of the daughters of misty
Erin, to which the impassible coldness of its possessor gave a transparent
pearliness and purity that nothing ever disturbed. Her large violet eyes
beamed from beneath their dark lashes with the haughty and expressive
glance of the south. Her carriage, though somewhat lofty, was free and
natural. Naturalness is, indeed, but another name for that "Spanish grace"
which has been so justly famed and eulogized. The irresistible attraction
which is born of it, and which, in former times, women shed around them as
the flame sheds light and the flowers perfume, they owed to the men, who
used to abhor whatever was put on, affected, or studied; anathematizing it
in a masculine way under the expressive epithet "monadas." [Footnote 50] In
naturalness there is truth, and without truth there is no perfection; in
naturalness there is grace, and without grace there is no real elegance.
Taste at present appears to lie in the opposite extreme, as if the
Florentines should dress their _Venus di Medicis_ as a show figure.

    [Footnote 50: Monkey airs, splashness.]

The spirit of Ismena was far less richly endowed than her person. She
possessed the cold, calm temperament of her father united to the haughty
and domineering disposition she had inherited from her mother, and these
qualities were exaggerated in her by the overbearing pride of the rich,
beautiful, and spoiled child. Her mind was ever occupied in framing for
herself a future as illustrious and brilliant as those which
fortune-tellers prognosticate, and so she rejected all the lovers who
offered her their affections, not one of them appearing likely to realize
her dreams of greatness. But changes of fortune, like the transformations
in magic comedies, come unlooked for and suddenly. Ismena's father lost his
whole fortune within a few months; thanks to the treachery of the English,
who seized so many of our ships and so much treasure before making a formal
declaration of war with Spain.
{241}
The fatal war which brought upon us the fatal family compact! Don Iago, who
had just lost his wife, retired, ruined, to his country house in Chiclana.
But this retreat did not long remain to him, for the house was advertised
for sale by his creditors. The first person who presented himself as a
purchaser was the General Count of Alcira. General Alcira had just returned
from a long residence in America. Though he counted but fifty-five years,
he appeared much older in consequence of the destructive action of that
climate, which, with its hot miasms, impairs the European even as it
corrodes iron. Notwithstanding his age, the general had become the heir of
a young nephew, from whose title the rule of succession excluded females.
On his return he went to Seville, his native city, where he was received by
his sister-in-law (who looked upon him as one come to deprive her and her
daughters of the riches and title they had possessed) with such bitterness
and hostility that, although he was one of the most generous of men, he was
justly indignant, and determined to leave Seville and establish himself in
Cadiz, and he decided well.

At that period, Seville, the staid, religious matron, with rosary in hand,
still more the buckram stays and the high powdered promontory--that,
without the hair, must have been a weight in itself--and the hoops with
which a lady could pass with ease only through a very wide door. At her
austere entertainments she played Baciga or Ombre with her canons, her
judges, her aldermen; and her cavaliers. She had no theatre, being withheld
therefrom by a religious vow. She had for illumination only the pious
lights that burned before her numerous pictures of saints. She had no
pavements, no _Paseo de Cristiana_.

Of course there were no steamboats, those swift news-bearers which have
since united in such close friendship these sister cities, the twin jewels
of Andalusia, Cadiz, even more beautiful than she is now, wore her drapery
in the low-necked Greek fashion which we still see in portraits of the
beauties of those days. Cadiz, the seductive siren of naked bosom and
silver scales, bathed in a sea of water, a sea of pleasure, and a sea of
riches. She knew well how to unite the art and culture of foreign elegance
with the dignity, ease, and spontaneity of Spanish grace, and, though the
fair Andalusian had adopted certain things and forms that were foreign, she
was none the less essentially Spanish in her delicate taste and
circumspection, and her attachment to her own nationality.

For, strange to tell, in those days the pompous and high-sounding
assumption of the "Spanish" which now fills the unholy sheets of the public
press, and resounds through all discourses like hollow and incessant
thunders, was unknown. It did not blare in lyric compositions, nor was it
made the instrument of a party for the promotion of such or such ideas, nor
was the bull Señorito [Footnote 51] chosen with enthusiasm as its symbol.

    [Footnote 51: The famous bull that, in 1850, in Seville, fought and
    killed a large tiger.]

But that which was Spanish was had with simplicity, as the brave man has
his intrepidity without proclaiming it, and as the fields have their
flowers without parading them, Spanish patriotism was not upon the lips,
but in the blood, in the being; it was the genius of the people; and it
became them so well, was so refined and generous, so gentle and chivalric,
so in harmony with the gracious southern type, that it came to be the
admiration and delight of strangers. But we have apostatized from it, do
not understand it, hold it in slight esteem, and, unlike the ass that
covered himself with the rich golden skin of the lion, we, more stupid than
he, instead of smoothing and cultivating that which nature has bestowed
upon us, wrap ourselves in one that is inferior to it.
{242}
Then the most candid gayety blended with an exquisite refinement pervaded
social intercourse. There were neither clubs nor casinos, only reunions, in
which gallantry was governed by the code contained in these ancient verses
of Suarez:

  "You are feared and worshiped;
   You to be obeyed:
   We saw humble worshipers,
   Of your frowns afraid.
   You the lovely conquerors;
   We your bondsman true:
   Ladies dear in vanquishers,
   We are slaves to you.
   You the praised and honored;
   Fairest under sun:
   We the lowly servitors,
   By your smiles undone."

The expression "to acquire a manner" was not then in use, but the practice
of good manners was a matter of course and of instinct. The officers of the
marine, brave and gentlemanly as they are now, but richer and more gallant,
constituted the chief ornament of the society of Cadiz. They had formed
themselves into a gay fraternity, at the head of which were the officers of
the man-of-war San Francisco de Paula, and which, in playful allusion to
the motto of the saint of this name--Caritas bonitas--styled itself "La
devota Hermandad de las Caritas Bonitas" [Footnote 52] (The devoted
Brotherhood of Beauty). In the theatre the national pieces of our own poets
were played, and the farces of Don Ramon de la Cruz were enthusiastically
applauded: at the brilliant fairs of Chiclana the inhabitants of Cadiz and
Puerto congregated like flocks of gorgeous birds; and Cadiz retained, long
years after, charms sufficient to inspire the song of Byron, that
discriminating appreciator of the beautiful.

    [Footnote 52: Caritas bonitas, Pretty faces.]

The General Count of Alcira desiring to buy a country house, that of Don
Iago O'Donnell was proposed to him, and be went to look at it. The
unfortunate proprietor threw it open to his inspection as soon as he
presented himself. The count was charmed with all that he saw in the
elegant mansion we have already described, and, above all, with the
daughter of its master, whom they encountered writing in a retired cabinet
that received light and fragrance from the garden. She was dressed in deep
mourning, and weeping bitterly while she answered letters from two of her
friends who had just married--one an English lord, and the other a nobleman
of Madrid. How bitterly those letters caused Ismena to feel the contrast
between the lot of her friends and that which compelled her, single and
poor, to abandon even this house, the only thing that remained to her of
the brilliant past.

Her tears moved and interested the good general to such an extent that,
having bought the house, he begged the occupant to remain in it and admit
him, the buyer, as a member of his family and the husband of his daughter.
It is hardly necessary to add that Don Iago received this proposition as a
message of felicity, and that his daughter hailed it as a means of escaping
lower depths of the abyss into which fortune had hurled her. To paint the
rage of the aunt's sister-in-law when she heard of the projected alliance
would be a difficult task. She spread calumnies upon Ismena, ridiculed the
marriage, and spit out her venom in bitter sarcasms, prophesying that the
union of the ambitious beggar with the worn-out valetudinarian would remain
without issue; in short, that Providence would mock their calculations, and
cause the title, for lack of a male inheritor, to return to her own family.
The excessive pride of Ismena, more than ever susceptible since her
misfortune, was stung beyond endurance by those gibes and revilings. And
she was still more chagrined when, after having been married two years
without giving birth to a child, she seemed to see the prophecies of her
enemy realized. It appeared that God would deny the blessing of children to
the wife who desired them not from the holy instinct of maternal love, but
to satisfy a base pride and a contemptible covetousness; not for the
blessed glory of seeing herself surrounded by her offspring, but from the
haughty and miserable desire of humiliating a rival--of triumphing over an
enemy.
{243}
It is at this time and under the influence of these feelings that we have
introduced Ismena, Countess of Alcira, bathed in tears. And for this we say
that these drops, so cold and bitter, were not tokens of wounded love, but
of rage and spite.


  Chapter III.


The general had learned that the house in Chiclana was for sale from his
secretary, who was the son of Don Iago's housekeeper. A few words will
explain this.

The general, when young, had for many years an orderly whom he loved well.
The Spanish orderly is the model domestic, the ideal servant. He is wanting
in nothing, has always more than enough, and does whatever is asked of him
unquestioningly and with pleasure. If he were bidden, he would, like St.
Theresa, plant rotten onions through the same spirit of blind obedience. He
has the heart of a child, the patience of a saint, and the attachment of
that type of devoted affection, the dog. Like him he loves and cares for
all that belongs to his master, and, most of all, for his children, if he
has any. And to such a degree does he carry this devotion, that one of our
celebrated generals has said that "an orderly makes the very best of dry
nurses." He has no will of his own, does not know what laziness is, is
humble and brave, grateful and obliging. And in the household, where his
coming may have occasioned the natural irritation and repulsion caused by
whatever invades the domestic circle, his departure is always sincerely
felt.

Before he left Spain the general, then a captain, had lived for a long time
with his orderly in the greatest friendship, without the latter having lost
the least grain of his respect for his chief. When the general went to
America, his orderly, to the great grief of both, left him, and returned to
his native town of Chiclana to marry the bride who, with a constancy not
unusual in Spain, had waited for him fifteen years. A few years later the
orderly died leaving one child, a son, to the care of his disconsolate
widow. The poor woman, accompanied by a little niece she had adopted, took
service with Don Iago O'Donnell. As for the boy, who was godson to the
general, the latter sent for him, had him educated under his own care, and
afterward made him his secretary. In this capacity he brought him back to
Spain. Lázaro--so he was named--was one of those beings who are sealed by
nature with the stamp of nobility, and who, aided by circumstances, become
unconscious heroes by simply following their natural instincts.

Having learned from his mother that the house in which she lived was for
sale, he had informed the general, who bought it, and with it his young and
beautiful wife.

A beautiful woman she was; as fair and delicate as an alabaster nymph; as
cold, also, and as void of feeling; a being who had never loved anything
but herself; insipid and without sweetness; a jessamine flower that had
never felt the rays of the sun.

Later in the afternoon, an attendant called Nora entered the room in which
we found Ismena, to open the windows. Nora had been Ismena's nurse, and had
never left her. She was a proud and cunning woman, and had done much to
develop the perverse dispositions of the girl.

"Always weeping," she said with a gesture of impatience at the sight of
Ismena's tears. "You will lose your good looks, and when your husband dies,
all you have beside will be gone, youth, consideration, and wealth. You
will then have no recourse but to turn pious and spend your days dressing
up the holy images."

"I know too well that I shall lose everything, that is why I weep," replied
Ismena.

{244}

"And who says that your lot may not be different?" answered Nora. "It is
not your sister-in-law that has the disposition of your future; you
yourself can do more to make your fortune than she to unmake it. Hope is
the last thing lost, but then one must not cross one's arms while they can
be of use."

"Idle talk," returned Ismena. "You know that my hopes are as vain as my
marriage is sterile."

"It will amount to the same thing," said Nora, "whether you give birth to a
son or adopt one."

The lady fixed her great blue eyes upon the woman as she exclaimed, "The
count would never consent!"

"He need not know it," replied Nora.

"A fraud, a crime, a robbery! Are you beside yourself?"

"All that sounds very lofty, yet in reality you will only be doing some
poor wretch an act of charity. Your nieces are well married; your
sister-in-law has a rich jointure, and does not need the count's money. If
they desire to have it, it is through ambition, and that you may not enjoy
it."

"Never! never!" said Ismena. "Better to lose rank and position than become
the slave of a secret which may bring us to dishonor. Never!" she repeated,
shaking her head as if she wished to shake the fatal thought from her mind.

"I only shall know the secret, and I alone will be responsible. So it will
be more secure in my breast than in your own."

"You will have to employ another person."

"Yes, but without confiding in him. I have already found the person. Your
husband is about to embark for Havana. When he returns, be will find a son
here."

"Nora, Nora! there is no wickedness of which you are not capable!"

"I am capable of anything that may result in benefit to you."

"But to deceive a man like the count would be the most unpardonable of
crimes!"

"Ismena, I have often heard you sing:

  'Deceit, a faithful friend art thou;
    'Tis truth that is our bane.
   Pain without sickness she doth give;
     Thou, sickness without pain.'

But to-day you appear to be more high flown than the poets themselves."

"But the text alludes to love quarrels."

"It is very applicable to everything else in life. As if you had never
known the case I have suggested to be put into practice; and is it not a
thousand times worse when combined with infidelity?"

At this moment the count entered. "Ismena, my child," he said, approaching
his wife, "I have come to take you out, your friends are already waiting
for you in the Cañada. How is it that these lovely spring afternoons do not
inspire you with a desire to go out and enjoy the free, balmy air?"

"I dislike to walk, and people worry me," answered Ismena, who had lost
color at sight of her husband.

"You look pale, my child," replied the count with tenderness, "and for some
time past you have seemed low-spirited. Are you not well?"

"There is nothing the matter with me," answered Ismena.

"At most," said Nora, "your sickness is not one that requires the attention
of a doctor." And she glanced at the count with a meaning smile.

Irritation and shame sent the hot blood mounting to Ismena's face.

"Nora," she exclaimed, "are you crazy? Be silent!"

"I will be silent, sir count, for, as the saying is, 'the more silent the
coming the more welcome the comer.'"

In the general's benevolent face glowed the light of a pure paternal hope.

"Is this certain?" he said, looking tenderly at his wife.

{245}

"Sir," said Nora, "have you not noticed for some time past her want of
appetite and her general languor without apparent cause? _She_ does
not believe it, and will not be convinced, but I who have more experience
am sure."

"Nora, it is false!" exclaimed Ismena, appalled.

"Time will show," replied Nora, with perfect composure.

"Time!" repeated Ismena indignantly.

At this moment they were interrupted by six deep measured strokes of the
clock.

"That fixes the time for the event," said Nora, with an affected laugh;
"six months from now, it says."


  Chapter IV.

Six months after these scenes the general, in an affectionate letter to his
wife, announced his return from Havana, whither he had been upon important
business. Ismena went to Cadiz to meet him, accompanied by a nurse who
carried in her arms the supposed heir.

This child had been brought from the Iocluso, [Footnote 53] and the secret
of the deception was known only to Ismena, to Nora, and to Lázaro; the
latter being the person selected by Nora to obtain the infant from the
asylum. How she had been able to persuade the good young man to bend
himself to her wicked plot can be understood only when it is known that he
believed it to have been sanctioned and arranged by his master. Lázaro
doubted until Nora, who had foreseen his opposition, and was prepared to
meet it, showed him the following passages in the last letter the general
had written to his wife:

    [Footnote 53: Establishment for the reception of abandoned infants.]

  "The sails which are to bear me from you, and, with you, from all the
  sweetness of my life, are already spread. Adieu, therefore: I hope on my
  return to find you with a child in your arms, which will render our
  happiness complete.

  "As I have told you before, you may, in the affair of which we know, and
  in all other's, trust Lázaro, in whom I place the most implicit
  confidence."

The letter ended with some tender expressions and the signature of the
general.

Nora, quick to perceive the use she could make of the above passages in
proving to Lázaro that the "affair of which we know," which was in reality
a matter relating to money, was the same she had in hand, had kept the
letter.

Lázaro, therefore, with the deepest sorrow, but the most entire devotion to
his benefactor, brought the innocent little one; which thus passed from the
bosom of an abandoned woman into the hands of a traitoress.

A little before the time at which we take up the thread of our story the
babe had been reclaimed, and the administrator of the asylum had demanded
it of Lázaro. Nora could find no means of escape from the difficulty this
demand occasioned them but to send Lázaro out of the country. Ismena also
vehemently urged his departure, and the devoted victim consented to go,
knowing that his absence, without apparent cause and without explanation,
would break the heart of his mother and of his young cousin, to whom he was
soon to have been married.

He embarked secretly in a small coasting vessel bound for Gibraltar, which,
being overtaken by a tempest off the perilous coast of Conil, was capsized,
and all on board were lost.

This catastrophe, of which she believed herself to be the cause, overcame
Ismena, and her suffering was augmented by a threatening presentiment that
would allow her to fix her thoughts neither upon the past nor future
without shuddering. The one reproached and the other appalled her.

{246}

Alas for the wretch that between these two phantoms drags out a miserable
existence! Happy is he who, by keeping his conscience pure, preserves, amid
misfortunes and sorrows, his peace of soul, the supreme good which God has
promised man in this exiled state.


  Chapter V.

For many years the beautiful house at Chiclana remained unoccupied, the
countess obstinately refusing to go there to enjoy the spring. Alas! for
her there was neither spring nor pleasure, for, through divine justice, the
results of her crime, a crime committed in cold blood and without a single
excuse, weighed heavily upon her, as if the Most High had wished, by the
force of circumstances, to impress upon her hard and daring spirit that
which the sentiments of humanity had failed to communicate.

And these circumstances were indeed terrible, for she had borne the count,
successively, two sons, whose birth filled the heart of their mother with
consternation. To increase her chagrin, she saw the oldest of the three
boys was growing up beautiful, brave, and sincere, occupying the first
place in her husband's heart. For not only did Ramon--so the boy was
called--sympathize with the general, but the equitable old man, seeing the
hostility with which the countess regarded him, redoubled his
manifestations of interest and affection toward the victim of her ill
temper, and thus, by the force of a terrible retribution, God had brought
remorse to that hard heart, and remorse had driven her from the house in
which everything reminded her of her crime.

Remorse! Thou that bindest the temples with a crown of thorns, and the
heart with a girdle of iron prongs; thou that makest the sleep so light and
the vigil so heavy; thou that interposest thyself to cloud the clear glance
that comes from the soul to the eyes, and to embitter the pure smile that
rises from the heart to the lips; thou so silent in face of the seductive
fault, so loud in thy denunciations when it is past, and there is no
recalling it. Cruel and inexorable remorse! by whom art thou sent? Is it by
the spirit of evil, that he may rejoice in his work and drive guilty man to
despair; or by God, to warn him, in order that he may yet expiate his
faults? For through thee two ways are opened to the soul--the way of death
and the way of repentance. Weak wills and lukewarm spirits fluctuate
between the two, shrinking alike from the furnace which would purify them,
and the bottomless sea of anguish in whose bitter abysses the impenitent
soul must writhe eternally.

These agonies to which Ismena was a prey, this remorse, this undying worm,
had gnawed at her heart and life like an incurable cancer, and her tortures
augmented in proportion as she felt her end approaching. In a continual
struggle with conscience, which cannot be compounded with by human reasons
or worldly purposes, because it is in itself a reason from God; every day
more undecided whether to enter upon the course it indicated or to follow
the path into which her pride had led her, Ismena, tearful alike of the
fiery furnace and of the dreadful abyss, was approaching death as a
criminal approaches the scaffold, wishing at the same time to lengthen the
distance and to shorten it. When her end seemed near, the doctors insisted,
as a last recourse, that she should try the air of the country, and the
house at Chiclana was prepared for the reception of its proprietors. The
most exquisite neatness was restored throughout. The awning once more
covered the court, the birds twittered in their gilded cages, and the
plants throve and bloomed, though Maria no longer sang as she watered them.

Announced by the sound of its bells, the carriage slowly approached and
stopped at the door. But she who descended from it, and, supported by the
general and a physician, dragged herself wearily through the marble portal
like a corpse entering its sumptuous mausoleum, is only the wasted shadow
of the once brilliant Ismena.
{247}
At twenty-eight she had lost all the brightness of youth, her splendid eyes
were dimmed and cast down, her golden locks had become gray, and her white
and faded skin was like a shroud that covers a skeleton. A few years had
sufficed to produce this change; for, instead of the gentle and reluctant
hand of time, it had been wrought by the destructive talon of suffering.
The countess was borne to a sofa, upon which she lay for a long while so
prostrated that she appeared unconscious of all that surrounded her. But
when left alone with Nora, she became feverish and agitated, and called for
Maria. Nora, foreseeing the violent shock the sight of this poor old woman,
the unfortunate victim of her fatality, must produce, would have put her
off; but the countess repeated the demand with so much exasperation that it
was necessary to obey. When Maria came in, Ismena extended her arms, and,
embracing her convulsively, laid her burning head upon the bosom of the
faithful friend who had witnessed her birth. But Maria was serene, for in
that bosom beat a pure heart. Her eyes had lost their former expression or
cheerful happiness, but still shone with the light of inward peace.

"Maria," exclaimed Ismena at last, "how have you been able to bear your
misfortune?"

"With the resignation which God gives when he is asked for it, my lady,"
replied the good woman.

"O blessed sorrows with which it is not incompatible!" was the agonized cry
of Ismena's heart.

"I told you one day, my lady, that my son filled me with pride; and God has
permitted that this son, my boast and my glory, should be defamed by all
the appearances of a crime."

"Appearances!" said Nora. "Who says that?"

"Every one," answered Maria with gentle firmness, and, after a moments'
pause, she continued with the same serenity: "A profound mystery hides from
my eyes, as from those of all others, the circumstances of his flight; but,
if anyone has foully caused it, may God forgive him, as I do! He and I know
that my son was not--could not be--a criminal; this is enough for me; I
will be silent and submit."

"And your motherly conviction does not deceive you!" exclaimed Ismena,
falling back upon the pillows of the sofa.

They carried her to her couch, attributing her exhaustion to the excitement
and fatigue of the journey.

Her agitation having been gradually calmed by a narcotic, she was once more
left in the care of the nurse.

The general, with delicate fore-thought, had caused the flow of the
fountain to be stopped, in order that the uncertain repose of his wile
might not be disturbed by the murmur of its water. But the clock in the
parlor struck twelve--twelve warning notes from the lips of time. As if the
old man had counted with inflexible memory the twelve years she had
survived her crime; the twelve years passed in luxury and surrounded by an
areola of respect and public consideration, since, in sacrificing
conscience to pride, she had also sacrificed the life and fair fame of a
noble and innocent man.

Ismena awoke with a start and sat upright in her bed, her perplexed glances
wandering in all directions, and a wild fever burning in her veins. A
devouring inquietude possessed her; the weight upon her breast suffocated
her. She sprang from the couch and rushed to the window; for, like Margret
in the "Faust" of Goethe, she was suffocating for air. Moonlight and
silence reposed without in a tranquil embrace. So profound was the calm
that it weighed upon the burdened soul of Ismena like the still but
oppressive atmosphere which precedes the tempest.

{248}

She leaned her burning forehead against the window bars. The court lay
black beneath--black but gilded; an emblem of her life. Then from a
distance there came to her ears two voices, blended, like faith and hope,
in prayer. They were the voices of Maria and Piedad reciting the rosary.
There was something deeply solemn in the sweet monotony with which the
words, without passion, without variation, without terrestrial modulations,
rose to heaven, as the smoke rises from the incense of the altar, gently,
without color, without impetuosity, as if drawn upward by celestial
attraction. Something very impressive in those words, thousands of times
repeated because thousands of times felt, in those petitions which are a
verbal tradition from Jesus Christ and his apostles; words so perfect and
complete in themselves, that all the progress and all the enlightenment of
the human mind have vainly endeavored to improve them.

At what wretched variance was Ismena's soul with the grave and tranquil
spirit of those words! She longed to unite in them, but could not!

"O my God!" she cried, withdrawing from the window, "I cannot pray."

But presently, drawn by the sacred and irresistible attraction, she
returned. She heard Maria pronounce these words: "For the repose of the
soul of my son Lázaro." And then the prayer of the two pious women
continued without other departure from the accustomed words.

"Ah! holy God!" exclaimed Ismena, wringing her hands, "my voice is not
worthy to unite with these pure tones which rise to thee unsoiled by guilt
and unchecked by remorse!" She prostrated herself with her face to the
floor, and remained until the last "amen" had mounted to heaven; then, as
she rose, shrinking from herself as from a spectre, her eyes fell upon
Nora, who had fallen asleep in a chair. She approached, and, clutching her
with that right hand, once so beautiful, but now like the claw of a bird of
prey, "You asleep!" she cried. "Iniquity asleep while innocence watches and
prays! Wake up, for your repose is more horrible than your crime! You see
her whom you rocked in her peaceful cradle entering--led by your infamous
suggestions--into her coffin, and you sleep while she is agonizing! What do
you see in the past? An unpunished crime; and you sleep! What do you see in
the present? A usurpation, a robbery, a crime committed and continued from
day to day in cold blood; and you sleep! What do you behold in the future?
The divine and universal justice of God; so sweet to the upright, so
terrible to the criminal; and you sleep! But this justice will yet cause to
fall upon your head some of the weight, which oppresses mine! Bear, then,
in addition to God's condemnation, the curse of her you corrupted! For I am
the most guilty of women, and, Nora, Nora, but for you I should never have
been what I am!"

Alarmed by Nora's cries, all the household hurried to the room to find the
countess in a frightful and convulsed state bordering upon madness. Nora,
too, was confused and incoherent, but this was attributed to her grief for
the approaching death of her mistress.


  Chapter VI.

During the following day the sick woman remained in a state of terrible
agitation, and at night the doctors were obliged again to administer a
powerful narcotic, which caused her to fall into a deep sleep.

The count was occupied in arranging some papers that were scattered upon an
antique ebony escritoire, ornamented in its various compartments with
exquisite carved work and paintings. In it Ismena kept her papers. It had
been opened that afternoon by her order to take out the writing materials
she had demanded.

{249}

Ismena had learned English from her father, to whom that tongue was
perfectly familiar, and, as the husband replaced the papers, he fixed his
eyes sadly upon a translation she had begun, grieved to think that she
would never finish it. It was from "Hamlet," and his glance rested upon the
last lines she had written--the monologue of King Claudius in the third
act. The writing was indistinct, as if traced by a trembling hand. The
translation, in which one familiar with the original would have noted some
voluntary omissions, ran as follows:

  "My crime is already rank; it calls to heaven. Upon it weighs the first
  curse that entered the world--that of the fratricide! My desire and my
  will impel me to pray, and yet I cannot, for the weight of my crime is
  greater than the force of my intention, and, like a man in whom two
  powers contend, I vacillate between ceding to the pressure of my guilt or
  giving myself up to my good intentions. But for what is mercy, if not to
  descend upon the brow of the sinner? And has not prayer the double virtue
  of preventing a fall and of lifting the fallen by obtaining his pardon?
  Then will I lift my eyes to heaven. But what form of prayer is
  appropriate to my crime? Can I ask and hope for forgiveness? Is there
  water enough in the gentle clouds to wash the blood from the hand of the
  fratricide? Is there remission for him who continues in the enjoyment of
  the benefits of his sin--his queen, his crown, his vain-glory? Ah! no,
  there cannot be! The gilded hand of iniquity may sink justice in the
  corrupted currents of the world, and the very price of guilt may buy the
  law of man. But there, on high, it is not so: there artifice obtains
  nothing and falsehood is of no avail: there, in the kingdom of truth, the
  deed will stand naked, and the sinner will have to be his own accuser.
  What, then, remains to us? To try the virtue or repentance? Ah! yes, it
  can do all. But, alas! if the sinner would repent and cannot? O wretched
  state! O bosom black as death! O soul, that in trying to free thyself
  entangled thyself the more in the meshes of thy sin!--angels, hasten to
  its aid!--melt, heart of steel!--inflexible knees, be bent! Alas! the
  words have flown, but wings are wanting to the heart; and the words that
  reach heaven without the heart find no entrance there!"

This imperfect translation, though it gave but a faint idea of the
beautiful and elevated poetry of the writer, filled the general with
admiration, for his was a mind accessible to all things beautiful and good.
But when he glanced at his wife, who lay so pale upon her white bed, like a
withered lily upon the snow, he reflected in all simplicity: "Why seek
these pictures of crime and passion? Why should the dove imitate the boding
cry of the owl? Why should the gentle lamb try to repeat the roar of the
wounded and bloody lion?"

Having put the papers in their place, he seated himself at the foot of his
wife's bed, and lifted his heart to God in a fervent petition for the life
of her he loved.

The alcove in which Ismena lay opened into the parlor, and at this moment,
with the pertinacity of a recollection always repulsed yet for ever
returning, the clock struck eleven. Its metallic strokes, vibrating and
pausing in the silence, suggested the idea of justice knocking at a closed
door--justice, against whom there is no door that can remain for ever
closed!

These clear sounds startled Ismena, and she awoke with a smothered moan.

The general, alarmed by her wild looks and confused words, approached, and,
encircling her with his arms, said:

"Compose yourself, Ismena, for you are better; the healthy sleep you have
had for several hours is restoring your strength."

"Have I been asleep?" she murmured. "Asleep on the brink of my sepulchre as
if it offered me rest! Asleep when so little time remains to arrange my
accounts in this world! Sit down, sir, for so I will address you, and not
as my husband. I am not worthy to be your wife. I do not wish to talk to
you as to a companion, but as a judge whose clemency I implore."

{250}

The general, taking no notice of these strange words, which he attributed
to delirium, endeavored to tranquillize his wife, telling her to put off
the explanations she wished to make until she should be stronger; but
Ismena persisted in being heard, and continued:

"I am about to die, and I leave all the good things of this world without
sorrow; all except one, that I still desire and would fain carry with me to
the grave. You, who have been to me father, husband, and benefactor, do not
deny what none but you can give! For that which I implore, sir, is your
forgiveness."

The general, as he listened, became more and more confirmed in the belief
that his wife was raving, and again begged her not to agitate herself as
she was doing. But Ismena only implored him the more earnestly to listen
without interrupting her.

"If a woman," she said, "who has expiated a crime by all that remorse can
inflict of torture and ruin; by the loss of health, of peace, and of life;
if this wretch, in her dying agony and despair, can inspire the least
compassion, oh! you who have been the most generous of men, you who have
strewn my life with flowers, have one branch of olive for the hour of my
death! Hear, without repulsing me, without deserting me in my last moments,
without making my last agony more intolerable by your curse, a confession
which will prove to you that my heart is not entirely perverted, since I
have the courage to make it."

A cold sweat stood upon the forehead of the dying woman; her stiffening
fingers worked convulsively; the words issued from her lips more
interruptedly and fainter, like the last drops of blood from a mortal
wound. Nevertheless, making one last heroic effort, she went on.

"I know that I am about to stab you to the heart, but by this means only
can I die at peace with God. Here," she continued, drawing a sealed paper
from under her pillow, "is a declaration made by me, for the purpose of
preventing a dishonest usurpation, and signed by two reverend witnesses,
which will prove to you that--Ramon--is not our son!" On hearing these
words, the general sprang from his chair, but, overwhelmed with grief and
astonishment, sank back again, exclaiming:

"Ramon! Ramon not my son! Whose, then, is he?"

"Only God knows, for his wretched parents abandoned him; he is a
foundling."

"But with what motive?" The general paused a moment and then continued with
indignation: "I see the motive!--ambition!--pride! Oh! what iniquity!"

"Have pity on my misery!" implored Ismena, wringing her hands.

"You are a base woman!" cried the general, with all the indignation of
probity against dishonesty, and all the aversion of virtue to the thought
of a crime.

Ismena had never before heard the paternal voice of her husband assume the
firm and terrible tone with which he now cast her treachery in her face,
and she sank under it as if struck by lightning. His profound sorrow and
stern condemnation seemed to open an abyss between him and her, and render
it impossible for the lips which had pronounced that severe sentence ever
to utter the pardon she craved more than life. Pardon! most beautiful and
perfect fruit of love, of which the value is so great that God's Son gave
his blood to buy it, and which, therefore, his Father grants for a single
tear, so great is his mercy! Pardon, divine gift, that pride neither asks
nor yields, but that humility both implores and concedes. Pardon, that,
like an efficacious intercession, lifts the sinner to heaven.

Had she perchance waited too long to ask it? For one moment the torrent of
angry blood had swept generosity and sacred mercy from the heart of him she
had injured; and must she die in that moment?
{251}
She sprang from the bed, and, falling upon her knees, laid her clenched
hands against his breast, shrieking in a voice intercepted by the
death-rattle:

"Pardon!"

Her last thought, her last feeling, her last breath dissolved in that last
word. It reached the heart of her husband. Bending forward, he caught her
in his arms, and lifted--a corpse.

And from the clock, as if time had waited for this moment to toll a
voluntary and pious passing bell, there issued twelve slow and measured
strokes.


  Chapter VII.

A secret fault, drawing with it its terrible consequences, interlaced one
with another, like a nest of venomous serpents, had already cost the one
who committed it her happiness and life, and the one who conceived it her
reason; for Nora, shocked into insanity by the fearful curse and death of
her mistress, was the inmate of a madhouse. But its hideous trail continued
still, entangling and envenoming the hitherto tranquil life of the General
Count of Alcira. The good old man never ceased to reproach himself for the
cruel epithet indignation had forced from his lips; the only expression he
had ever uttered that could wound the poor worn heart that implored but one
pious word to permit it to cease its beating in peace. Instead of that
word, he had cast the cruel taunt under which it had burst in despair. He
wept burning tears for not having conceded the pardon which could have been
but one instant wanting to his generous soul. And that instant had been her
last. His forgiveness might have soothed her anguish, prolonged her life,
and sweetened her death; and he had refused it. This remembrance became in
its turn a remorse, and poisoned his existence.

The reaction he experienced, with his natural goodness of heart, had the
effect to render almost excusable in his eyes a fault counterbalanced by so
many shining qualities, and blotted out by such unparalleled remorse and by
mortal sufferings; for death, when it takes its prey, has the sweet
prerogative of carrying with it under the earth the evil it has done,
leaving the good behind for an epitaph.

The general atoned for that one moment in which he had forgotten to be a
Christian by multiplied works of charity, offered in sacrifice to obtain
from heaven the pardon earth had denied the penitent, and by incessant
offerings for the repose of her soul. Offerings which the Eternal would
receive; for the Creator has not left man a foundling. He has acknowledged
him as a son, has given him precepts, and promised him, from the cross, a
glorious inheritance.

Every morning a mass was offered for the rest of her whose image dwelt in
the heart of the old man who knelt at the foot of the altar, uniting his
fervent petitions with those of the priest that was sacrificing.

The general's life was still more embittered by the painful secret which
oppressed and involved him and his sons with him, as the serpent in the
group of the Laocoon makes both father and sons his prey. He could not
break the arcanum without sacrificing the one to whom his kind heart clung
with tender affection, without defaming the sacred ashes of the mother of
his children. He, therefore, respecting the youth and innocence of his
boys, kept the fatal secret, which, in truth, he had not the courage to
reveal. The time, he argued within himself, when the veil must be withdrawn
from such a sad and cruel reality will come soon enough. Sometimes he
resolved to let it be buried with him. But what right had he, a man of such
strict principles, to deprive his heirs of their inheritance in favor of a
stranger? Could he make an alien the head of his noble house?
{252}
Allow a foundling to usurp the rights of its lawful representatives?
Worldly fathers would rather listen to the opinion of the world than to the
voice of conscience, placing social considerations above its decisions,
persuading it that they are compelled thereto by circumstances. But let no
one compound with conscience, lest she cease to be conscience; lest she
become a conniver instead of a sentinel, a weather-cock instead of a
foundation; lest she lose the respect and confidence she is bound to
inspire. For she should give her decisions as the sun sends forth his rays,
with nothing to hinder them or turn them from their direction.

The years sped onward. The count grew infirm and saw his end approaching.
Wishing to pass the last days of his life in the society of his children,
and feeling that he ought to reveal the secret he had kept so long, he sent
for them to join him in Chiclana, where he wished to die, in order to be
buried beside his wife, thereby giving her, even after he was dead, a last
public testimony of affection and respect.

The word enlightenment had not then been brought into use, nor had the
colleges been modernized. Yet this did not prevent the three brothers from
being such finished and accomplished gentlemen that the sight of them
filled their father's heart with pleasure and pride.

Ramon, the eldest, came from the school of artillery, where he had been the
companion of Daoiz and Velarde. The second came from the academy of marine
guards, the academy which produced the heroes of Trafalgar, those Titans
who contended with a powerful adversary, with the treachery of an ally, and
with the unchained fury of the elements, and who were crushed, not
vanquished, by the three united. The youngest arrived from the university
of Seville, in which, at that time, or a little before, the Listas,
Reinosas, Blaneos, Carvajales, Arjonos, Roldanes, and the worthy, wise, and
exemplary Maestre, were students. For though Spain has lacked railroads,
hotels, and refined and sensual means of entertainment, she has never, in
any epoch, lacked wise men and heroes.

The general looked at the three in turn with an indefinable expression of
tenderness; but when his glance fell upon Ramon, he lowered his eyes to
hide the tears that filled them.

His vivid pleasure at the sight of his children, mingled with the anguish
of knowing that over the head of the unconscious Ramon the sword of
Damocles was suspended, agitated the old man so much that he passed the
night in feverish wakefulness, and his state on the following morning was
such that his doctors advised him to make his last preparations. The grief
of his children, by whom he was adored, was heart-rending. But the general
was so well prepared to leave the world and appear before the bar of God,
that his last dispositions, though solemn, were short and serene.

Toward night, feeling himself grow weaker every moment, he made
arrangements to be left alone with his sons, who drew near his bed,
repressing their tears in order not to afflict him.

He looked long at them, and then said: "My children, I am about to tell you
a cruel secret, which will make one of you wretched. It has lain for many
years buried deep in my soul; but I am dying, and can be its repository no
longer. O my God! my heart gives the lie to my lips; and, nevertheless, one
of you is not my son, and the mother at whose grave you go to pray never
bore you."

The grieved astonishment which manifested itself in the countenances of the
three youths, left them pale, speechless, and overwhelmed.

"You know well," continued the father, after a pause, "that my interest and
tenderness, in and toward you all have been the same, and that it cannot be
known, even to yourselves, which of you has no right to bear my name. And
you, my children, which one of you is it that does not feel for me the
affection of a son?"

The simultaneous and eloquent reply of the three was to throw themselves,
suffocated by their sobs, into the arms of the good old man.

{253}

"Alas! then," he proceeded, "if your own hearts do not tell you, it is my
cruel duty to declare it."

The youths regarded each other for a moment, and then, with one impulse
embracing each other, exclaimed with one voice:

"Father, we will not know it!"

The father raised his hands and eyes to heaven. "My God," he cried, "I
thank thee! I die contented. My sons, my sons! may the satisfaction of
having hidden for ever an unhappy secret, may the remembrance of having
covered with a mantle of holy fraternal love the misfortune of one of
yourselves, make your lives as happy and tranquil as you have made my
death."

And laying his hands upon the heads of the three brothers, who had knelt at
his bedside, he said: "Let my last words be your recompense. My sons, I
leave you my blessing!"


------

  Mercersburg Philosophy.

  By A. Protestant.


  [As allusion having been made in the article on Dr. Bacon, which appeared
  in our April number, "to the German Reformed Presbyterians and Dr.
  Nevin," has called forth the following communication. We publish it as
  interesting to our readers who will bear in mind in its perusal that it
  is from a Protestant source, and while making, therefore, an allowance
  for some of its statements, will at the same time be not a little
  surprised that one who sees so much Catholic truth should fail to
  identify what he sees with the Catholic Church.--Ed. C. W.]


From the mountain village of Mercersburg in Pennsylvania emanated a
philosophy--theology we, who are its prophets and adherents, call it--which
has done much, and is destined to do more, to unprotestantize
Protestantism. Nor do we, who are Protestants, regret this. The longer we
ponder our work the more are we convinced of its utility, and confirmed in
our resolution to pursue it. Well aware, as we are, that the Reformation
has proved a failure, except it be as a preparation for a higher form of
Christianity to follow nearer the old landmarks, and free from the
democratic tendencies that have crept into the Protestant Church from the
institutions of the state, or which, perhaps, more properly have moulded
the institutions of the state themselves as the natural outgrowth of the
system taught by Luther and Calvin, we cannot but rejoice that this is so.
Our people have a natural desire to worship, instead of being compelled to
give an intellectual assent to arguments on points of doctrine, and the
teachers of the Mercersburg philosophy are determined to gratify them.

We see clearly, what many others have failed to see, that New England
Unitarianism, and after it infidelity, to which it leads, are not only the
logical but the actual consequences of Protestantism. But we believe in
historical development; and as this is development in the wrong direction,
we see nothing before us but to profit by the lesson and retrace our steps.
We know that a cult which rejects the Christ and elevates the Jesus will
soon degrade the Jesus too, and that, following an attempt to attain to
merely human excellence, will be a society distorted by the vices of
vanity, avarice, and selfishness, and then a gradual obliteration of all
the virtues. Men are beginning to see, dimly enough, that this age is a
transition period in the world's history, when all our conceptions of
truth, that is, Protestant conceptions of truth, are unsettled and passing
through crucible, as it were, to come out in new and untried forms.
{254}
But they do not understand the law of transition periods, and, while they
acknowledge that the last great transition was the Reformation, they fail
to perceive that the theories embraced at that time have failed. A certain
feeling of disappointment at the work sectarianism has wrought sometimes
oppresses them, but, instead of attempting to bridge over the chasm, they
endeavor to tear away the broken arches which remain.

Everybody can see that Protestantism had a grand start during the first
thirty years of its existence. That Rome would soon give its last
convulsive gasp seemed patent to the eyes of all reformers; but now, after
three hundred years of Protestant endeavor, a leading Protestant clergyman
of New York is constrained to say that "Protestant Christendom betrays
signs of weakness in every part," and to declare, and rejoice in the
declaration, that "Modern life is not 'Christian' in any intelligible
sense. The industrial interest is openly averse to it both at home and
abroad. Political life is, if possible, still more unchristian." But
continues the same authority: "If industry, politics, literature, art, have
abandoned Christ, they have as fully and unreservedly embraced Jesus." Now
this is either sheer nonsense or it is downright infidelity. About the
premises there can be no doubt. It is but a small part of the so-called
Christian church that looks to Christ as the central fact of the
system--the super-natural agency working through the church for the
salvation of men. But the broad churchmen, when they have as fully and
unreservedly embraced what they understand by Jesus as they now believe
they have, will discover that the "touching devotion to the cause of
humanity," about which they talk so eloquently, will develop itself into
pure selfishness, and the rapacity of Wall street and the heartlessness of
Madison square will extend their ramifications through every order of
society.

Seeing that ostentatious wealth is about to be at a premium, and
unobtrusive piety at a discount, we, who believe in the Mercersburg
philosophy, are endeavoring to interpose our hands to stay the sweeping
tide.

I hope I have now laid the grounds with the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD
for an enunciation of what we believe and teach.

The cardinal principle of the system we inculcate is the incarnation,
viewed not as a mere speculative fact, but as a real transaction of God in
the world. Thus, our belief is peculiarly christological in its character,
all things being looked at through the person of the crucified and risen
Saviour. The church which he founded is an object of faith--a new creation
in the natural world working through the body of Christ and mediating
super-naturally between him and his people. Its ministers hold a divine
commission from him by apostolical succession. Its sacraments are not mere
signs, but seals of the grace they represent. Baptism is for the remission
of sins. The Eucharist includes the mystical presence of Christ by the
power of the Holy Ghost; that is, the real presence in a mystery. With
these dogmas we started, contending that we had all the attributes that
were ascribed to the church in the beginning--unity, sanctity, catholicity,
and apostolicity.

It is now many years since the work was started--as many, indeed, as were
required for the Reformation in Europe to reach the acme of its success.
Since then a growing culture and enlarged views of doctrine and of worship
have seemed to require an enlargement of the range within which the
movement was originally intended to be confined, and beyond which we did
not conceive of its expansion. The time has been spent in educating the
backward up to the starting-point, and in preparing a better form of
worship for them when they are sufficiently advanced to receive it.
{255}
The movement commenced at Marshall College. "Old Marshall," which started
as a high school for boys and was soon after endowed, though sparingly, as
a college, has since been merged with another with more money, but without
the prestige, and, alas! without the true spirit of the philosophy of the
mountain college. In the same village with this institution is the
theological seminary of a church, respectable for numbers and influence,
though without fashionable appointments or pretensions to popular favor,
which still retains the true ring of the old metal. Some time after its
foundation, it came to be presided over by a man of rare genius as a
theological writer and thinker, who was also president of the college.
Profound in his conceptions of truth and logical in his reasoning, be
possessed an unbounded influence over those who came under his
instructions, and but few young men have sat at the feet of this Gamaliel
without going away fully indoctrinated with his peculiar opinions, and
zealous standard-bearers in carrying forward the work which he had begun.

Many prejudices had to be encountered and overcome in carrying forward this
work. Bigotry and prejudice are barriers against which reason and religion
strike in vain. Many who placed their hands to the plough turned back in
the furrow. Opposition made the seed strike deeper root, and in the very
slowness of the work is an earnest of its ultimate triumph. It may take us
us nearer to Rome than we contemplate just now; it may bring Rome nearer to
us than she at present desires. Come what will of it, it is plain sailing
to us, although we cannot see land on either horizon. Nor do we see such
cause for terror in the "horrors and superstitions of popery" which many
men believe constantly lurks there. It seems to us that what men call
Romanism may not be such a bad thing after all. We know it has done much
good. A church that was a power in the days of the old Roman empire, and
could not be overwhelmed by the tide of barbarism that overturned the power
of the Caesars, but could finally roll back that tide of darkness,
preserving Christianity through ages which have not left a vestige of the
universal wreck behind, has certainly claims upon our profoundest gratitude
and most reverential awe. To us, it would seem strange, indeed, that the
vehicle for the preservation of Christianity through ages when civilization
was blotted out, and which did preserve not only its essence but its form,
should be the mystical Babylon and the man of sin.

Were this, indeed, so, we know in what desperate straits we would be
placed. The form of the primitive church is generally flippantly declared
by Protestants to have been nearer the system of New England than old
England; and the Roman hierarchy is regarded as a long distance from
either, which it certainly is. It is easy to assume that in the earlier
ages of the church there was no papacy, no priesthood, no liturgy, no
belief in a supernatural virtue in baptism, nor of the real presence in the
sacrament, and that everything was quite in accordance with modern ideas of
private judgment, popular freedom, and common sense; but it is not so easy
to prove it, nor indeed is it desirable even for Protestants that it should
be proved. The Reformation has always been understood to have been the
historical product of the church itself; but if these assumptions were well
founded, the church out of whose bosom the Reformation sprang would be no
church at all, and the Reformation no reformation, but only a revolution.
Thus, indeed, Christianity would be the theory of a philosopher, but not
the life of a Christian.

The work we have been doing is different from Puseyism even in its spirit.
The simplicity of Keble and the earnestness and power of Newman, in the
days of their early zeal when these two wrought together, is nearer to what
we intend if different from what we have accomplished or may yet
accomplish. We thank the Roman Catholic Church for its Christian year, its
symbols of faith, its traditions of battle and of conquest, its early
martyrology, and its unceasing and undying purpose.
{256}
Nor do we conceal that there are some things in the Roman Catholic Church
to which we object. These are rather historical defects than present
imperfections, and we see as much in our own history to regret and to
condemn.

I well remember the unpretending little church in which it was my privilege
to worship in a country town of Pennsylvania. The Episcopalians had no
foothold there, and the Presbyterians consequently, combining together at
once the imperiousness and the exclusiveness for which they have ever been
distinguished, pretended to monopolize the fashion and the piety, the
society and the religion, of the village. They, of course, contemned us,
and opened wide their doors for our disorganizers, who were crying out
against innovation when we were seeking to make our church a place of
worship, instead of a bazaar for the display of fine clothing and false
curls. The Methodists, living only the false life of a sickly
sentimentality, and the Lutherans degraded even from the doctrines and
practices Luther taught in his fiery zeal, were absorbed in their childish
schemes of marrying and giving in marriage, engaged in special efforts at
reform by revivals and meetings of religious inquiry, and busied in raising
subscriptions for objects like Mrs. Jellaby's mission at Borrioboola-Gha or
Sunday-school libraries which would not be sectarian, had little time to
think of us after they received their quietus in the "anxious bench"
controversy of 1843. There were, indeed, many solemn conclaves over our
affairs by gossips who neither understood nor wished to understand the work
we were doing, and half in fear that we should be lost for too much
reverence for mother church, and half in joy at the prospect of a few
proselytes, everybody affected to commiserate us. But these, though often
working mischief among our "weaker vessels," were not seriously opposed by
us. Our purpose was steadily kept in view, notwithstanding.

It was by preaching principally that we hoped to accomplish our task, and,
after the stubborn fallow of an unworked field had been broken, to recur
gradually to the forms of the church. But the furrows, we felt, would be an
empty mockery without the teachings that give them force. To inculcate
truth was then our first duty. This was often done by the more earnest and
intelligent of our clergy, by following up the seasons of the Christian
calendar and deriving lessons from each. Incidentally was urged, with more
or less boldness according to the courage and temper of the man whose duty
it was to enforce them, doctrines which for many years sounded strangely to
Protestant ears. Among these, besides those already noticed in this paper,
I may instance, as an example least expected by Catholics to be urged
anywhere outside of mother church itself, the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception. Starting with the proposition that that which is holy cannot be
born of that which is unclean and sinful, I have time and again heard this
theme urged upon his people with force and fervor by an earnest and fervent
pastor. Not with equal boldness, perhaps, but with no less sincerity and
fervor have I heard him urge the ministrations of the Virgin. Often in
declaring these doctrines he would enforce a proposition by putting it in
the form of a question, and one of these, I believe, I shall continue to
hear ringing in my ears while the words of men remain intelligible to me:
Why should we not reverence the mother of our Lord?

These things may be news to Catholics, and may be news even to many in
whose ears they have been thundered for a quarter of a century. The latter
hear without understanding, but the words will be re-echoed in their
hearing until they are not terms without meaning.
{257}
The Mercersburg philosophy is the antagonism in thought and in its social
aspects of New England transcendentalism and Plymouth Rock
conventionalisms, and receives no favor, and merits none, from a people
among whom Dr. Holmes's Elsie Venner is an exponent of the life and
practice of the present, as Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World
was of past generations. And Pennsylvania, where this philosophy has its
stronghold, being unlike New England, of which Dr. Mather said, "Being a
country whose interests are remarkably inwrapped in ecclesiastical
circumstances, ministers ought to concern themselves in politics," the body
of the people who compose the German Reformed Church, and who look back to
the Heidelberg Catechism as their earliest enunciation of faith, and the
Mercersberg theology as their latest development of truth, have never felt
the need of political preaching. A simple motto includes all their
aspirations, their hopes, and their fears, their preaching, their practice,
and their eternal reward--CHRIST CRUCIFIED.


------

    Original.

    A Family Motto.


  A well proportioned ancient shield,
  And on the azure-tinted field
        The red crusader's cross:
  Words scarce could tell at what a loss
        The well-read scholar stood--
  In what an earnest, startled mood,
  Beneath the ancient, comely shield,
  And red cross on the azure field,
        This motto's thread
        He whispering read,
        "_Fortiter gerit crucem_."

  A true crusader, staunch and bold,
  Was he, my good ancestor old,
        Who thus could boast his cross
  He bore unmindful of the loss:
        "Strong, strong his cross to bear,"
  Comes down in characters most fair;
  Comes down a glory unto me
  Through many a bloody century;
        The good seed kept
        Though old faith slept,
        "_Fortiter gerit crucem_."

{258}

  Though old faith slept! a deep blush came
  Across his cheek, a blush of shame:
        That bold crusader's cross,
  Borne in the very teeth of loss,
        No longer worn with pride;
  His conscience told him, laid aside
  Like some base superstitions's sign:
  That cross which from high heaven will shine.
            When men shall hear,
            With joy or fear,
            "_Fortiter gerit crucem_."

  Years passed; his quickened eye had scanned
  The archives rich of many a land.
            Yet still a purpose, named
  Not to himself, each spoil had claimed;
            And day by day to hail
  On truth's horizon some new sail,
  Strange sweetness sent through all his veins,
  Till to his contrite breast he strains
            That cross severe,
            While angels hear,
            "_Fortiter gerit crucem_."


------

  From The Month.

  "He Went About Doing Good."


The memory of the French _émigrés_ in England must be almost extinct.
A few survivors may remain among us, who can just remember the marquis with
faded decorations who taught them French or drawing, or the venerable abbé
who patted them on the head and whispered his blessing. But the horrors
that led to the sudden appearance on our shores of several thousand French
exiles, the burst of compassion and friendliness with which they were
welcomed, the sustained respect which they continued to excite, the noble
efforts successfully made, under the crushing pressure of a fearfully
expensive war, to provide for their wants, and the recompense that came in
the shape of prejudices cleared away and preparation for the reception of
truth--these things are now matters of history, and we have few traditions
of them to supply the place of recollection. They do not even enter much
into our current literature. In our own younger days the courteous and
dignified, although threadbare, French nobleman, and even the snuff-box and
shoe-buckles and silver hairs of the kind-hearted French priests, not
unfrequently figured in the moderate supply--very different from the
present inundation--of tales and works of fiction which sufficed for the
wants of that remote epoch. We know of no work of note of the present day
in which use is made of the character of an _émigré_, except the Tale
of Two Cities; and that is hardly an exception, since the exiles there
introduced are little more than pegs to the story. We would gladly know
more of the intercourse of our grandfathers with these confessors for the
faith, of the homage which their courage and cheerfulness extorted, and
especially of the working of that influence for good, which, indirectly,
must have had vast effects, and have tended greatly both to accelerate the
removal of the penal laws, and to bring about that reaction toward the
church of which we are now reaping the harvest; and which, even directly,
was probably the cause of very numerous conversions.
{259}
A memorandum found among the papers of Abbé Carron, with the title, "A
little memorandum most precious to my heart and to my faith," contained a
list of fifty-five Protestants received by him into the church before the
year 1803; and many more, whose names did not appear in that list, were
known to have been converted by his ministry. The simple fact that, within
twelve years after the public burning of Catholic chapels and the houses of
Catholics in London, our parliament was voting money by acclamation to
support several thousands of foreign priests who were in exile purely for
their loyalty to the Catholic Church, is at first sight almost startling.
The British lion must surely have worn rather a puzzled expression of
countenance when he found himself bringing bread to popish priests of the
most thoroughly popish kind, and respectfully licking their hands. While
great admiration is really due to the generosity of the noble animal on
this occasion, it is perhaps only fair, as well as obvious, to remark, that
he probably somewhat confounded the cause of the clergy, who suffered only
for their faith, with that of the exiles in general, and was somewhat
influenced by his hatred first of the _sans-culottes_, and afterward
of Bonaparte. The clergy, however, although for the most part very strongly
attached to the French throne, were quite ready to work on under any
government, and in whatever privations, and were driven into exile or
threatened with death solely for the same sort of offence as that of St.
Thomas of Canterbury, of Fisher and More; that is, for their repudiation of
the wry principle which is the essential basis of the so-called Church of
England.

An exceedingly interesting life,[Footnote 54] notwithstanding its somewhat
superfluous diffuseness, has lately been published at Paris of the
venerable Abbé Carron, to whom the Catholics of London are indebted for the
chapel and schools of the Somers-town Mission, and indirectly, through his
successor Abbé Nerinckx, for the establishment among us of the "Faithful
Companions of Jesus."

    [Footnote 54: Vie de l'Abbé Carron, par un Bénédictin de la
    Congrégation de France. Paris, 1866.]

We can hardly help envying the good religious who has sent forth this huge
volume of nearly 700 pages, the thorough roominess in which he carries on
his labor of love; omitting no detail that in any way furthers his purpose,
describing not only the holy priest himself, but most of his relations and
intimate friends, and freely inserting letters and documents at full
length. Some of these, such as letters of commendation from royal
personages, and other notabilities, and the official answers, which show
that the "Circumlocution Office" was a French quite as much as an English
institution, we could perhaps forego. But the letters of the abbé himself,
numerous as they are, do not contain a line too many for our taste; for
every line exhales the fragrance of a love the strength of which, as a
natural affection, could seldom have been surpassed, and which, at the same
time, although not so thoroughly predominated over by the supernatural as
in the highest order of saints, is yet always under its influence, and
ready to pass into it. Few men have ever lived less in or for themselves.
He lived for his mother, brother, and sisters, for his nephews and nieces
and adopted children, for his king and country, for his fellow-exiles, and,
above all, for the poor, to whose special service he bound himself by
repeated vows, which were gloriously fulfilled. We cannot see in his most
confidential letters or in his most private memoranda a trace of indulgence
in a single natural pleasure, except that of being loved. Although a very
voluminous writer, he seems to have been absolutely free from literary
vanity. He allowed the Abbé Gérard, the author of Valmont--to whom he
submitted most of his productions--to go on criticising and correcting
without mercy, and was ready to suppress anything at a word from him.
{260}
As he had no vulnerable point, so to speak, but in his affections, it was
here, as is usual with those whom God would train for great things, that
the sharpest wounds were inflicted. The early death of a younger sister
born soon after himself, who had been his confidante and associate in piety
and in all his schemes of devotion and devotedness as a child; the death of
his mother, whom he would have idolized if he could have idolized anything,
but from whose death-bed he went back calmly to sit all the evening in the
confessional; the deaths of several others of those nearest and dearest to
him, and the defection of a few; the overthrow of his gigantic and
successful undertakings in behalf of the poor of his native town; two
deportations and nearly half a life spent in banishment from his beloved
France; banishment from Normandy and from home even after his return to
France; frequent contact with distress greater than even _his_
wonderful ability to relieve; and, perhaps worst of all, his own share,
however innocently, in the ruin of an intimate friend whom he had
encouraged to invest all his property in his favorite undertaking of
workshops at Rennes, and who died broken-hearted, leaving a widow and seven
children destitute: these were the things that made his _way of the
cross_, and moulded his loving and bleeding heart to a greater likeness
of the Crucified.

It was on the 16th of September, 1792, that Abbé Carron, then in the
thirty-third year of his age, and the tenth of his priesthood, landed in
Jersey with 250 other priests, after a tempestuous passage of forty-eight
hours from St. Malo, in which they had narrowly escaped the fate to which
those who forced them to put to sea in a storm had apparently destined
them. These were nearly the last of the exiles. The September massacres
gave the crown of martyrdom to most of the clergy faithful to their vows,
who had not either been alarmed into flight or forcibly banished. The Abbé
Carron, and those who accompanied him, were not, properly speaking,
_émigrés_ but _déportés_. Of the _émigrés_ or fugitives,
again, there were two classes: those who, like most of the nobility, had
fled when their property was seized and their privileges taken away; and
those who, as was the case with most of the clergy, had remained at their
posts till they were exposed to indignities and outrages, and their lives
endangered. But nothing would induce the Abbé Carron and those who were
influenced by his example to fly. The civil character of the clergy had
been decreed by the National Assembly on the 12th of July, 1790, and
unfortunately accepted by Louis XVI on the 24th of August. On the 4th of
January, 1791, the oath which was the test of confessorship had been
demanded of the bishops, and almost unanimously refused; and soon afterward
began the persecution of the priests and the religious who followed their
noble example. On the 11th of May the municipality of Rennes endeavored to
install the schismatical clergy in the chief parishes of the town, and
threatened summary proceedings against all who had refused the oath for any
attempt to discharge their ministry any more. The Abbé Carron, the chief
curate of the large parish of St. Germain, in which he had labored from the
time of his ordination, was one of those specially interdicted. At the same
time, the violent republicans of the town, who, although comparatively
few--for the mass of the inhabitants continued Catholic and loyal--were
prevailing, as elsewhere, over the more moderate, had begun to threaten his
life. He preached the last course of Lent sermons that were heard for many
years to come in his native town, although parties of armed men were known
to be in wait for him; but after Easter, by order of the vicar-general, he
retired to the house of a brother a few leagues out of the town.
{261}
On his way, early in the morning, he was met by forty armed men who had
been searching for him at the very house to which he was going, with the
intention of murdering him, and whose violence had so agitated his brother,
who was in weak health, that he died not long after; but although they
spoke to the abbé, they did not touch him. His life had been still more
wonderfully preserved several years before, when three men--one of whom was
enraged at the conversion by the abbé's preaching of a woman whom he had
seduced--had laid a plot for his assassination, and had entrapped him,
under pretence of his services being required for a wounded man, into a
solitary house on the bank of the river. When he approached the bed in
which his pretended penitent had laid himself ready to strike the murderous
blow, he exclaimed, "You have sent for me too late: the unfortunate man is
no more;" and his companions found that the wretch had suddenly expired.
Carron had not yet finished his work; and, although in a less signally
supernatural manner, the divine hand that had then fallen on his would-be
murderer interposed again and again to protect him. From his retirement,
where he had composed and published a vigorous and pathetic remonstrance to
those religious who were yielding to the storm and breaking their vows, he
returned to his perish, and did not intermit his work till he was seized
and carried to prison, and into forced exile in the August of the next
year. He continued to carry on and even to extend, in addition to his
sacerdotal labors, the weaving, rope and sail-making, and other
manufactures that he had established for the benefit of the poor, and was
actually giving employment and subsistence to 1500 artisans when he was
arrested. At the same time he had expended 100,000 francs on the buildings
where the works were carried on; and when they were taken possession of by
the republicans, the stock in hand was valued at more than 94,000 francs,
and 90,000 more were due to him for sails supplied to the navy from his
establishment. His success in this undertaking was probably the reason for
which, although he was unflinching in his zeal, and resolutely refused to
allow any constitutional priest to officiate in his church, his arrest was
so long delayed. While inflexibly firm in matters of conscience, he was
ready enough to accommodate himself in everything else to the new state of
things, in order to carry on his work. He was willing to be known as
_citoyen Carron_, and to be _tutoyed_ to any extent. He obeyed
the law which ordered all the _imermentés_ to present themselves every
day to the municipal authorities. He implored that, if they thought fit to
imprison him, he might still be permitted to carry on his works of charity,
and offered to visit them accompanied by an officer, and to live
contentedly in confinement. "Although breathing infected air," he said, "I
may still manage to live a few years, and discharge the sacred obligation
of reimbursing the friends who lent me money to do good with. Then I will
make a present of my establishment to my country, and I shall die satisfied
with having undeceived those who think that I had in view to enrich myself
or my family."

But the fatal blow, though delayed, was not very long in coming. On the
10th of August a party of the national guard took him to the _hôtel de
ville_, and thence to the Abbey of St. Melaine, which had been turned
into a prison; and on the 8th of September he and his fellow-prisoners were
escorted to St. Malo to be shipped for Jersey. His bishop, his rector, and
many of his clerical friends had fled months before; but he had kept to his
resolution, more expressively, his biographer says, than grammatically
worded, "_Jamais je n'ai voulu consentir à m'émigrer._" He was in bad
health, and suffering besides from a violent toothache; but neither of
this, nor of his being made to share the single mattress of a prisoner in a
high fever, nor of any of the brutal insults which he received in prison
and on the journey to the coast, does he say a word in the letters which he
managed to send to his sister and nephews.
{262}
He addresses them all by name, longs to fold them to his breast, hopes one
day to see them again, consoles and advises them, and sends the little ones
the few sous that he happened to have in his possession. But his thoughts
of his own sufferings are only such as these:

  "Believe me, I do not suffer the hundredth part of what I have deserved.
  An unfortunate sinner, a base and too frequent transgressor, such as I
  know myself to be, ought not to think anything of such slight drops of
  bitterness. My God, when we love you, how sweet, how consoling, how
  delicious it is to suffer for you; and how magnificently does the love
  which we bear you recompense us for all the miseries of life! Do not, my
  dear child, think of your friend's imprisonment, without remembering at
  the same time that I deserve to be at the bottom of the most loathsome
  dungeon, and under a thousand chains, to bewail the sins of my youth."

His last message, when on the point of embarking, was to M. Paris, whom be
had commissioned to watch over his factories.

  "I hope that this letter, in which I enclose my heart, will find you in
  good health. Mine has had some variations, but it is at present quite
  sound; and I desire, if my God preserves me in it, to consecrate it again
  one day entirely to the service of my dear fellow-citizens; for I shall
  always love them, and shall always sigh for the moment when, recovering
  from their unfounded prejudices, they cease to close their heart to me.
  Speak of me now and then to the members of that dear colony whose
  prosperity formed the sweetest enjoyment of my youth. Tell them that I
  shall always be their father and their friend, and that I shall seek all
  my life for the means of making them happy. If I can gain any practical
  knowledge of manufactures in England, I shall make haste to apply it to
  the improvement of La Piletière,"

He was never permitted to revisit his work at Rennes; but his indefatigable
activity and burning zeal found a still wider field, and achieved still
greater wonders in exile.

It was no slight task that awaited him. The two hundred and fifty penniless
outcasts--of whom he was one--came to swell a crowd of more than three
thousand priests and religious, living in discomfort and distress in the
midst of a population far more bitterly opposed to the Catholic religion
than the people of England, and in danger, from the want of occupation, and
from the cessation of all outward practices of piety, of falling into
disorder. Only the year before, a Catholic lady had tried to get permission
to have mass celebrated in private, and the good people of Jersey had
threatened to throw any priest who ventured to celebrate mass into a
caldron of boiling oil; and when after some time she got a brave Irish
priest to run the risk, her husband, who served his mass, held a naked
sword to be ready for an attack. The Abbé Carron had not been long in the
island before nine masses were said every morning in her parlor. After a
short visit to London, whither he went to consult with the Bishop of Léon
and the rector of his old parish at Rennes--not forgetting at the same time
his promise to obtain information that would be useful at La Piletière--he
settled himself to his work on the 8th of October. He opened an oratory at
once, in which he said mass every day, and preached on Sunday, with some
secrecy at first, but very soon, as the dispositions of the people changed,
without the necessity of any precautions. He gave several courses of
spiritual exercises to the clergy, by which their fervor was rekindled. He
set on foot a large dispensary, in which a priest, who had been a surgeon
before his ordination, made up and administered remedies, and in which
another priest dispensed soup, wine, linen, and other necessaries. Then he
collected a great quantity of books, and opened a library and reading-room,
where the clergy could come from their over-crowded barrack-rooms to study
or pray in silence and in comfort. He provided another collection of books
to form a circulating library for the emigrant laity, many of whom had been
hurried into exile without being able to bring anything with them; and
Catholic books were, of course, unattainable at that time in Jersey.
{263}
By the June after his arrival he had two schools at work for their sons and
daughters, and constituted himself master of the upper division of the
boys' school, but taught the catechism and explained the epistles and
gospels to all the classes in each institution. These were the only
Catholic places of instruction in the whole island. He was, besides, the
common refuge for all the wants, spiritual and temporal, of the whole
colony; he was hard at work at the composition of some of the numerous
volumes which he published to increase his resources of charity; and he
continued, till war broke off the communication between England and France,
to direct, as far as was possible, the factories of La Piletière. Yet, with
all these undertakings on hand, he was living himself in a state of almost
destitution. One room served him for a second chapel, for confessional,
class-room, reception-room, and bedchamber; and having no servant, he had
to move and replace the tables and benches, and sweep and dust several
times a day. And, with all this multifarious work, he made it a rule to
read two chapters of Holy Scripture on his knees every day, to make a visit
every afternoon to the blessed sacrament, to make at least half an hour's
mental prayer, and to read a chapter in the Imitation, another in the
Spiritual Combat, and at least fifteen pages of a manual of theology,
however pressing his occupations might be. He prescribed to himself in a
rule of life, drawn up in Jersey, and found after his death, to rise at
four, however late he might have retired to rest; to say office after his
meditation, and then to celebrate; to fast every day, never taking anything
before dinner, and only milk for his collation, and on Fridays only bread;
never to touch wine, and to confine himself to bread and vegetables when be
dined alone; and in various other ways to deprive himself of comfort, and
to bring his standard of what was necessary far below that which is usual
even with the pious and charitable. The only expensive article that he
retained was a watch, the alarum of which he found needful to wake him; but
be promised, as soon as be had thoroughly acquired the habit of waking
before four o'clock, to give this also away to his "dear friends the poor;
who," he said, "shall have everything that I can deny myself." His rule of
life, which contains also devout aspirations for every different act of the
day, and for times of wakefulness at night, ends with this fervent
petition:

  "O incomprehensible and eternal treasure of my soul, the one adorable
  object of all the feelings, affections, and emotions of my heart, Jesus,
  my Jesus, my love and my all, oh! that I may love you, that I may live
  only to love you, and to cause you to be loved upon earth! Grant me, O
  Lord! days well filled, a pure life, and a happy death, that may conduct
  me to your bosom!"

That such a man should exercise great influence for good, and work wonders,
we cease to be surprised. When his undertakings assumed soon afterward a
still more extended range of responsibility in London, Bishop Douglas
expressed to the Bishop of Léon his amazement and alarm, and was answered:
"Reassure yourself, my lord; I have known Abbé Carron a long time, and I am
accustomed to see him work miracles." Yet we should hardly, perhaps, be
prepared for what he actually effected. When the republican forces under
General Hoche were massed on the coast, apparently for an invasion of our
territories, the English government resolved to fortify Jersey, and deemed
it expedient to transfer the exiles to London. A curious proposal had just
been made by the military commander, that the clergy should take up arms;
which was, however, courteously refused, and the refusal courteously
accepted. In August, 1796, the abbé came to London, charged with the task
of finding accommodation and providing for the wants of the French colony
from Jersey.
{264}
Besides the herculean task of finding lodgings for most of them, he at once
hired two houses in Tottenham-court road and reopened his two schools, and
soon after opened two rooms for public chapels, and established again his
libraries. In less than three years he had also under his care a hospital
for forty aged and infirm ecclesiastics, and another for twenty-five female
patients, an ecclesiastical seminary containing twenty-five students in
training for the priesthood, and a Maison de Providence, on the plan of the
houses of the Sisters of Charity, provided with all necessary supplies for
visiting and relieving the poor. In 1799, to his two day-schools were added
_pensionnats_--the one for eighty boys, and the other for sixty
girls--all the expenses of which, in excess of the twelve or eighteen
guineas per head granted by the British government, fell on the abbé. His
way of returning thanks was to promise some additional work of charity.
Thus, in an effusion of gratitude for the opening of the hospice for old
priests, he bound himself to give a dinner to six poor old men every 28th
of October; when the seminary was opened, he promised to give a dinner
every 1st of December to twelve poor children, to wait on them himself, and
to send them home with new clothes and bread in their hands; and when the
female hospital was opened, to give a marriage portion every 25th of
October to three virtuous young women.

When in peculiarly great difficulties, his plan, like that of many saints,
was to give in alms any little money that remained, in order, as he said,
"to draw down dew from heaven;" and this never failed. Rich Protestants
called and left bank-notes, without giving him time to discover who they
were, or sent anonymous donations. Two gentlemen in drab-colored attire
astonished the pupils, trained to the most exquisite politeness, by coming
in one day without removing their hats; and one of them, who turned out to
be that torment of our infancy, Lindsey Murray, after seeing the whole
establishment, deposited £10 in the abbé's hands. The leading Catholics
were, of course, profuse in their offerings, and all ready to place
themselves at his disposal. The hoarded jewels of the richer exiles melted
into alms for the poor. Actors read plays for his benefit, and the great
Catalani gave a concert for him. He had been encouraged at the outset by
even more striking dispositions of Divine Providence. A rich Englishman,
living at St. Aubin in Jersey, had entreated him to accept his house and
estate and become his heir; but, as the offer involved the condition of
being naturalized and abandoning France, his love for his country, that had
used him so cruelly, prevented his listening to it. Soon after his
settlement in London he found himself without resources, and heavily in
debt. Mr. Desprez, his former rector, met him coming out of his oratory in
a state of great depression, and proposed a walk in the park. It was early,
and no one was to be seen. A man passed them at a rapid pace, and, when a
little in advance of them, drew some packages out of his pocket, one of
which fell to the ground. The abbé picked it up, and found a bundle of
notes. He ran after the man, shouting to him, but in vain, to stop, and at
last overtook him. The other refused to stop, and declared that the notes
did not belong to him, and that he was in a great hurry. "Where do they
come from, then?" was the natural question. "From there, sir," said the
stranger, pointing upward. They amounted, Mr. Desprez recorded, to the
value of some scores of thousands of francs. The abbé used to say that,
while in England, more than a million guineas had passed through his hands.
Yet he was inexorable in his rule of never receiving anything of value for
himself. He refused whatever was clogged with the condition of keeping it
himself.

In 1797, an amnesty for the exiles was voted, and for a week he was hoping
to return to France, and had even closed his schools; but the government,
who were better acquainted with the state of things, refused him a
passport, and the _coup d'état_ of the 4th of September revoked the
amnesty.
{265}
In November, 1799, he settled with all his establishments, except the
seminary for priests, which was now not so much required, at Somers-town.
They occupied ten large houses, the rent of three being paid by the
government, and that of the others by himself. A French journal describes
them as situated outside of London, in good air, and _quite in the
country_.

In 1801, he might have returned to France. The famous concordat was signed
on the 15th of July, and made public on the following Easter, the 12th of
April, 1802. The Bishop of Rennes, who yielded, although with rather too
much of protest, to the invitation from the Holy See addressed to all the
old bishops to resign their sees, in order to facilitate the working of the
concordat, earnestly entreated that Abbé Carron might be his successor; and
the First Consul desired himself to secure him. But the articles
fraudulently added by Napoleon, and against which the pope, when he became
aware of them, vehemently protested, made the abbé feel it to be impossible
to work satisfactorily in France while they were in force.

The schism of the _Petite Eglise_, or Blanchardism as it was called in
England, was a terrible blow to him. More than half the bishops still in
exile and many of the clergy--and among them his dearest friends--held out
against the Holy See. But his fidelity never wavered, not even while the
vicar-apostolic of the London district was acting timidly, and weakening
the effect of Dr. Milner's more energetic measures. The _organic
articles_ were a sore puzzle and distress to him; but he would never
countenance a word of disrespect to the Holy See. In a synod of bishops he
was chosen by Dr. Milner for his theologian, but rejected on the ground of
his being a foreigner. This firmness of his drew upon him ultimately a
fierce persecution, and great attempts were made, but with only partial
success, to alienate from him Louis XVIII. and the other members of the
exiled dynasty, who had themselves remonstrated with the Holy See on the
concordat. But no ecclesiastical dignity was ever offered him after the
restoration. A storm of abusive pamphlets, anonymous letters, and
slanderous reports of the worst kind fell for some time keenly upon him.
Yet in his correspondence with his dear relations in Normandy, which was
now resumed and carried on till war broke out again, there is no allusion
to any of his trials, except that of his continual separation from them. He
longs to see them; he interests himself in all the details of their
families, and gives them advice and encouragement; but he has no space for
his own afflictions. The only thing that disputes with them for his love
--for his love of God is supreme over all--is his love of the poor. "I love
you," he cries; "yes, certainly, I love you with all my heart, and all the
dear ones by whom you are surrounded; but I love my poor still more; they
are my numerous and best-beloved family."

In 1807, the popularity of the French clergy was so great, and had so
increased the favorable feeling toward Catholics generally, that he thought
it time to build a regular church. Hitherto he had officiated in the
largest room of one of the schools. The impossibility of raising
4000_l_. for the purpose was soon surmounted by one to whom nothing
was impossible that the glory of God seemed to require. So the church in
the Polygon soon rose, and was crowded at once on its being opened; and he
added to his other labors the task of giving sermons in English, which it
cost him immense pains to elaborate and learn by heart. As his little flock
of exiles, who were now making their way back to France diminished, his
ministry both among the French settled in London and among the English
increased. He made it a rule to visit all his sick--of whom he had a large
number--at least once a week, and those seriously ill every day.
{266}
He visited one daily, and often twice a day, for six months together. His
poor schools were enlarged and admitted English as well as French
Catholics. His records of conversions became more and more numerous; and
each cost him weeks, and generally months, of careful preliminary
instruction. He was constantly engaged in writing, and published twelve or
thirteen different works in London. He was carrying on also a
correspondence with many Protestants and sceptics; to whose difficulties he
was never weary of replying. Part of his correspondence with one alone
extended to twenty-seven letters, mostly of eight or ten pages each. How he
could multiply himself sufficiently for all that he was doing is one of
those mysteries which we find in the lives of saints alone. When the
demands of the _émigrés_ on his purse were less heavy, he began to
distribute soup and coals to the poor Catholics of London; an express
prohibition from government preventing him from exte